


Life Is What Happens

by kittenmittens



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Peter and Gamora friendship - Freeform, i still don't know what im doing, lactation (in a non relevant to the plot way)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-02-16 01:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2251476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenmittens/pseuds/kittenmittens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kid wailed quietly, kind of like he was trying to get Peter to understand just how wrong he was.</p><p>At least, that's what it felt like. But Peter knew better. And this was the best he could do.</p><p>So, swallowing the dry feeling in his throat, he started to sing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Peter woke up feeling sick to his stomach again.

Well, no. Not just "sick to his stomach." More of that pulling, burning, twisting sensation rolling around in his gut that used to tell him he wasn't going to have to fake a temperature to get out of school. Or, at some later period in life, that Yondu wasn't going to smack him upside the head for saying in a timorous, barely-audible mumble that he "didn't feel good." Nah, this was the kind of thing that'd end up with his mom placing her hand against his forehead (she'd always had cool hands, but they were never really _cold_ until the end) and coo at him; something like "Oh, baby, you're burnin' up" or, in a sterner voice, "You oughta get yourself back to bed, Peter, I don't want you gettin' any sicker". Yondu's response would be more along the lines of "Get yer ass back in holdin', I don't want you hurlin' no Terran gunk all over my next paycheck." If he was in a _really_ good mood, maybe he'd add a five minute speech about how, if Peter came even close to messing up their bounty, the whole crew would have to resort to cooking a nice, well-done _cream of Peter_ soup so they didn't starve between paychecks. This was, naturally, Papa Smurf's way of saying "You're gross. Go back to bed because, while I will continue to treat you like a talking load of crap, even I'm not gonna risk leading a child to their death."

It was surprisingly difficult not to reflect on his past as he spewed bile the toilet bowl. Which happened to be in _The Milano's_ one and only bathroom. It happened to be connected to his quarters, which had honestly made for a lot of uncomfortable late night encounters in the past few months. Uncomfortable enough that he'd been giving some pretty serious consideration to shelling out for a second lavatory, anyway.

Wiping his mouth, he let out a few strangled "shit"s and at least one "this sucks" before hunching over and heaving into the bowl a second time. And a third. This whole experience was fucking horrible, and it tended to remain fucking horrible until one or two in what he assumed would be the afternoon, if "daytime" was a thing that mattered in the middle of bum-fuck Knowhere. And thinking that brought to mind what Peter considered to be the worst side effect of all: thanks to having his head essentually glued to the porcelain throne, since moving was out of the question for at least a solid twenty minutes, he couldn't even share gems like that with the rest of his "crew." (He was still debating on whether calling them a crew was accurate or something they'd be outright offended by, but he had to admit, it had a decent ring to it.)

Pulling his head up as the nausea finally subsided, Peter noted that the only time this had happened. If he had to guess, he'd say it was the...

Well, shit. He wasn't sure anymore. Most likely because it was too gross for him to want to keep track of. Worst flu he'd ever had, by far. At least no one else was giving him crap for it. Admittedly, he was betting it was because he kept waking up throughout his sleep cycle just to hurl, all while everyone else continued to stay passed the hell out. And maybe he was struggling to name just one more reason this was the worst thing ever for him and not just a minor inconvenience that, at the very least, didn't seem to be killing him.

After all, "space flus" were totally a common, normal thing. Peter was living proof of that at this point.

You know.

Possibly.

 

* * *

 

Later, when everyone was awake and Peter was feeling a bit less like something somebody might scrape off their shoe, Gamora did that thing where she sort of brushed her hand over his shoulder when she walked by. Kind of a nonverbal way of saying, "I like you so much I barely even thought about killing you." He was betting he was one of only around six other people Gamora felt that way about. Y'know, presumably. He never exactly _asked._ Besides, the feelings she had for the rest of the idiots on board didn't go half as deep as they did for Peter.

And yeah, the construction of that sentence was definitely worth a crude, appreciative snort, but Peter had a killer headache, and right now, that accidental filthy pun was not worth making his brain explode.

Plus, he and Gamora were...

Well, he wasn't sure _what_ they were at this point. They'd done it—" _it"_ being the creation of the beast with two backs, the two it takes to tango, etcetera, etcetera—just once, and he still remembered it in perfect clarity. And honestly? That was saying something. With Gamora, when he thought about what they did together, it didn't blend into every other night with every other girl, panting and throwing her head back and shuddering against him as she gasped. With all those times, there'd be something _off;_ she'd get his name wrong, or he'd forget hers, or he was all too focused on getting relief, just thinking to himself, _come on already_. But there was nothing to take him out of the moment with Gamora. There wasn't really a lot of talking, just their two bodies, hers guiding his, and wordless murmurs as her hands went _all fucking over_ him, his mind swimming with the feel of her lips, her breath, her ass...

No kidding, the sex had been amazing.

And Gamora was...

Shit, _she_ was amazing _._

But it was everything that came after that felt sort of...

Sort of like something was missing. God, he didn't know. Maybe after all was said and done, the outcome was just... unexpected. He'd go back to comparing it to how it'd been with the other girls, but Gamora wasn't even on the same level. Afterwards, he didn't feel bored with Gamora. She was literally a throat-slitting Wicked Witch of the West turned "Atoner from Mars", and what kind of asshole manages to call _that_ boring without lying through his teeth? Definitely not Peter. But despite that, she wasn't...

_Things_ weren't...

Different between them. Not after it happened, not before. She hadn't been reduced to some evergreen floozie in his eyes, because he wasn't a complete shit-stain of a person—at least, he liked to believe as much—but she wasn't magically his alien girlfriend who he'd become absolutely, completely, irrevocably smitten with. Not how his mom had always described her feelings for his interstellar deadbeat dad. Not how every predictable piece of garbage romance movie he'd ever seen told him "love" was supposed to be— and no, he really didn't want to use that word, it felt cheap, it felt weird, and worse, it made him feel _guilty,_ because he didn't think it applied to Gamora. At least, not in the _right_ way.

And now he was just kind of lost. And feeling grossed out with himself, much more so than usual— and, admittedly, he got that he should have felt grossed out with himself way before he even met Gamora, though that wouldn't have been any fun. It made him queasy when he thought about how hadn't waited for the feelings of lovey-dovey, Bambi-meets-chick-Bambi feelings to kick in. Instead, he went and tried to drown all the confusion out like he usually did.

He was about ready to drop down on his knees and pray that Gamora's race went easy on cheating, lying scumbags. Because otherwise, he was pretty much screwed.

Although, really, _reasonably,_ whatever higher power in this galaxy existed, it had probably punished him enough after the last indecent encounter he'd had.

Which he didn't want to think about. Like, not at all.

Seriously. He didn't exactly want to break it to Gamora the last person he'd gotten more intimate with than her happened to be a cop who sorta hated his guts.

And thinking back, maybe that was a higher power's way of saying, "Okay, you need to _stop._ "

And it worked. A little belatedly, but hey; what with it being pretty much one tiny, incremental step up from zapping him straight into Gay Space Hell, it _better've._

Right?

Not that it solved his problems at all. Not even close. Shit, maybe this consistant hurling was less a space flu and more his own twisted up guilt finding some way to _force_ Peter to acknowledge it. He didn't really have any more believable explanations beyond—and yes, he realized it was getting repetitive— _space flu._

After all that inner monologuing, he did eventually remember he should probably say something to Gamora. And when he looked at her, she smiled back at him, which was pretty much as close as she'd get to saying "go ahead" without actually saying it. So, naturally, he turned right back around and shovelled whatever questionable thing he'd bought in lieu of cereal into his mouth.

He'd talk to her later.

Y'know, if she was in a good mood. A _really_ good mood.

"Jesus, Quill." Rocket scrambled down of the ladder under the cockpit, stomping around pretty decently for somebody who walked like a kitten. "Next time you mess your pants, mind giving it an extra flush?" He grumbled to himself, clambering onto the chair opposite Peter and standing on the seat, yanking the "cereal" towards himself without so much as a please. "I mean, I thought somebody gave birth in there. I was lookin' to cut the umbelical cord."

"That's disgusting." Peter rolled his eyes, trying to swallow and choking a little in the process.

"And so, for the first time in history, the humie gets my point." Rocket waved his paw? Hand? Peter still wasn't sure, and like hell was he going to ask. Either way, the appendage got waved around with flourish, then jammed unabashedly into the box of what Peter was still debating over calling "food." "Let's give him a round of applause, shall we?"

"Am groo?" Groot squeaked, wobbling out of Pete'rs bunk on new legs (And by new, Peter didn't just mean the "everything about babies is called new for some reason" kind, he literally meant "grew them last week" new) and colliding with Peter's leg. Apparently pleased with what he probably considered a freaking miracle of transportation, Groot rested his chubby-as-a-tree-can-feasibly-be chin against Peter's knee and beamed.

"No, he's not—" Rocket sputtered, already sounding irritated enough to make Peter's headache spasm. "He didn't _actually_ preform some kinda brainiac-ish feat sorta thing. He just stated the freakin' obvious."

Peter watched Groot as he took all that in, then nodded sagely. "Am groo." And, after considering whatever the grown ups were saying, the little bark-brain pointed towards the empty chair next to Peter and whined.

"What?" Peter raised his eyebrows, bending down towards Groot. "What's up, Lassie? Timmy down the well? Considering taking up English lessons this time around?" He clasped his hands together, leaning against the table theatrically. "Pleeeaaase say 'yes.' And that's _yes,_ not _I am Groot._ Got that?"

Groot let out the most affronted huff Peter had heard from him in a while, and he felt Rocket glaring holes in the back of his skull in response to that. "Am _Groo._ " Groot insisted moodily.

"Yeah, yeah. I know," Peter reached out and grabbed Groot under his weedy, little arms, plopping him down on the chair. "Happy?"

"Mm." Groot wriggled a little, then placed his stubby hands on the surface of the table thoughtfully before deciding, "Am Groo."

"Good. Glad that's taken care of." Peter leaned back in his chair, throwing an arm lazily over his face to block out whatever dim light _The Milano_ could generate on a fuel level of what was probably bone dry. "How long till you think he's done being fun sized?"

"You say that like you think I got a history of dealin' with grabby little tree runts." Rocket yanked his arm out of the box, made a face at the tasteless pellets, then jammed the stuff back inside. "You think if I knew he was comin' back I'dve tried to give him a freakin' funeral?"

"Point taken." Peter sighed, slumping forward again and glancing at Groot, who had apparently forgiven him enough to give him another dumb, cherubic smile. "... And I'm guessing Trufulla Tree here hasn't given you any answers, either."

"You kiddin' me? He's—hey, did you just call him somethin' nasty?" Rocket pointed an accusing finger at Peter. "Don't think I won't find out if you did."

"Does it matter?" Peter slumped even further, crossing his arms on the table and resting his head against them. "I mean, he's not exactly giving off a ton of intelligent conversation-ish vibes."

Groot glanced at Rocket, then Peter, then gave the exact kind of gurgle that sounded like he was going to spit up sap. Which had been happening up until a few days ago, and Peter did _not_ want to break that streak.

Rocket watched Groot with a sort of half-repulsed, half-pitying grimace, then heaved a sigh and shrugged reluctantly at Peter. "... You got a point, actually."

Peter shrugged back, smirking a little as he prepared to say something along the lines of there being a _reason_ he was everyone's captain/leader/flawless-plan-generator before getting interrupted. Of course.

"Peter!"

Peter turned his chair, sizing up Gamora's spooked expression as she stood by the ladder. "What?" He hadn't seen her look this genuinely _emotive_ since they met. It would've been nice if she hadn't been pummeling him at the time because he wanted to be able to look back on their first meeting with some degree of fondness. But it was kind of a shitstorm. He wasn't stupid enough that he couldn't admit as much.

Seriously.

Shit. _Storm._

Tornado, actually. Maybe hurricane.

Anyway.

"Drax recieved a message from a former ally." She seemed breathless, which, for someone as unnaturally in shape as Gamora, was kind of worrying. It meant she was stressed out, and the last time Peter recalled her being stressed out, it involved a lot of explosions—with the Galaxy possibly being one of them.

"And... That's bad." Peter tried to say it in a way that implied he knew where she was going with this. Emphasis on tried.

"... _Yes,_ Peter." Pressing the tips of her fingers against her temple, Gamora paced into the room, standing in front of Peter before dropping her hand so she could look him in the eye. "He says he has news about Ronan's followers." She swallowed, clenching and un-clenching one of her hands in an anxious way you mostly wouldn't know was a nervous (not murderous) gesture unless you knew her. "That they're planning something. It involves Thanos. He says he doesn't know much, but from what he can determine, there's vital information to be gained from involvement."

Peter dug his fingers against the table without really realizing it. "... What do you think we should do?" Gamora frowned, then gave Peter an irritated look. Peter stared back, muttering, "What?"

Gamora's eyes bugged out a bit in apparent annoyance. "What do you mean, 'what'?"

Peter turned enough to throw both his arms up in exasperation. "You're the one who's lookin' at me like you're pissed! I said what first!"

"I'm not _pissed_ at you!" Gamora rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. "I'm just... a little confused. And irritated. " She placed a hand on her hip and gestured towards Peter. "You're the one who's always saying you have a plan."

"A- _hem_." Rocket raised one of his fingers meaningfully, not even looking up from—wait, when did he start building... whatever that was? "I think we're forgettin' who coined that phrase in the first place."

"Okay, come _on."_ Peter screwed his face up, mashing the heel of his palm against his temple. "You didn't _invent_ the entire phrase. If anything, it's a fifty-fifty split between us." He paused. "... Maybe sixty-forty. Since my plan saved a whole planet and your plan almost got us shot full of holes."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Rocket clambered to his feet, fur bristling. "Did my plan not have enough safety _precautionaries_ for you?"

Peter shrugged. "It could've _stood_ to be a little less down to the wire, yes!"

"Peter— " Gamora began warningly.

"My mistake, Quill." Rocket sat back down, folding his arms behind his head and kicking his gross, probably trash-stanky feet up on the table. Peter leaned across and smacked them off and Rocket shot him another glower before continuing. "Next time, I'll make sure it's got trillions of credits worth of collatoral damage. Ooh! Maybe throw in some Space Pirates who got some kinda stabbin' fetish. Y'know, like with _your_ plan."

Peter seethed a bit. Just, like, a little. He had to admit, Rocket could've been a whole lot nastier and mentioned the Nova officers. But whatever. Guy still didn't have to be a freakin' dick about it.

"Am Groo?" Groot frowned concernedly, tears (or sap, maybe) welling up in the corners of his eyes.

Rocket heaved a sigh, letting his head loll to one side. "Naaah. He ain't that dumb."

Peter rolled his shoulders, getting up from his chair and giving Rocket a truce-ish sort of glance. "I'm gonna assume that was you defending me."

Rocket closed his eyes and sneered. "I ain't sayin' nothin'."

" _Peter._ " Gamora was doing that bug eyed thing again.

"What?" Peter stared at her for a second, but it took her raising her... brow-less... region... for the message to get across. "Oh. OH. Right. The... Thanos... thing." Gamora didn't really seem to want to dignify that with a response, and Peter wasn't sure he could blame her. "So... What's he got up his sleeves?"

Without changing her expression even one tiny bit, Gamora replied, "Nothing. They are far too fitted."

"That's... Uh." Peter shook his head. "Never mind. What'd Drax's ally-person say?"

"The forces united under Thanos are holding a tournament," she stated carefully. "If I'm remembering correctly, they haven't done it for years. Nova has had most of its usual benefactors under surveillance or in custody up until recently. Essentially... " Gamora swallowed, looking like she was seeing something she really didn't want to. What with the whole "Daughter of Thanos" thing, in some way, she probably was. "Whoever proves themselves the most ruthless and loyal in battle will recieve pledge into Thanos' inner circle. But... not all the participants are willing." She frowned deeply, gaze dropping sadly, and Peter felt his stomach do a familiar sort of twinge when he looked at her. "Well?" She let out a faint, reserved exhale. "What should we do?" He could practically hear the unspoken, _We can't stand by and let this happen._

Not now. Not after everything what she and Peter and everyone else on board went through to finally _get_ why shit like this matters to them.

Peter shrugged, thinking deeply for a second. "... What about Nova?"

Gamora shook her head. "Any word of them trying to intervene would either result in the tournament being shut down, or worse."

Peter swallowed, raising his eyebrows slowly. "Worse?"

"Last time Nova tried to stop the competition, Thanos took hostages. And..." She took a deep, shuddering inhale and exhaled slowly. "It.... It wasn't pretty."

"Okay... " Peter frowned, biting the inside of his cheek uneasily. "Scratch that off the list." He turned as Drax lumbered down the hall, stopping to stand by Gamora. "I think we'd better handle this one ourselves."

"How?" Drax rumbled, shifting his weight in a way that almost seemed nervous. Like a tank, if it spontaneously started squirming.

"How else?" Peter managed a bit of a smile, realizing Yondu'd probably be some sick, disturbing form of proud if he could hear him now. Knowing as much sort of made Peter's skin crawl, but whatever. "We're gonna enter that tournament. And one of us is gonna win."

  



	2. Chapter 2

"We can't just  _enter_ the tournament _."_

Gamora sat with her legs crossed and her back arched a little. She seemed nervous. See, when she was confident, she either had perfect posture or actually slouched in a way that made her look like a serial killer. Which Peter guessed she sort of was, but he was trying not to focus on that. "Even if we aren't wanted by Nova anymore, people all across the quadrant know who we are. We have  _reputations._ " A tiny, asshole-ish smirk flitted across her lips. Peter would totally be proud if he weren't about to get verbally sucker punched. "Well-- most of us do."

"Okay,  _ouch."_ Peter widened his eyes and flattened his lips as he boggled at the ground for a second. "First of all, people  _definitely_ know who I am now." It's not like saving all of Xandar was less than headliner material. "Second, I thought of that already. And I got it covered. Kind of literally." He looked back up at Gamora and grinned. He was sort of expecting to get an understanding look in return, but nope. Not even close. "Y'know, like... body paint. We're gonna use body paint. It's funny, cuz..." He glanced away, voice getting slightly quieter. "Cuz it'd... Uh. You know.  _Cover_ you." Clearing his throat, he shook his head and wagged a finger at Gamora's curls. "And I'm thinkin' we do something with the hair, too."

Gamora frowned, glancing down at herself and pulling a single lock of the purple tinted stuff off her shoulder. She studied it for a second, then got a hardened, admittedly terrifying look on her face. Lifting her head, she glowered at Peter from under her brow. "Hand me a knife."

"No, I mean-- not this second!" Pressing one palm against his forehead, Peter slid his hand through his hair and groaned. " _Jesus_ ... "

"That's all well and good or whatever... "Rocket stood again, dropping his probable doomsday device and slamming his fists against the table. "But how, exactly, are you plannin' to keep yours truly from bein' recognized? To reiterate my  _in-genie-yuss_ words from our first encounter--"

"There isn't nothin' like you," Peter drawled. "Yeah. I got it the first time."

" _Ain't_ no thing like me," Rocket corrected, exaggeratedly swooping one arm out and then jerking his thumb towards himself. "'Cept me. You wanna jot that down or you think you got it through the 'ole brick wall of a noggin' this time?"

"... Yeah." Peter rolled his eyes, then hunched his shoulders and jammed his hands into his pockets. "I was thinking... you'd be mission control. Y'know, stay behind, watch the ship...  _not come."_

"You kiddin' me?" Rocket squawked, flat out leaping onto the table. "You can't do shit without me! You'd still be rottin' in the Kyln without my help, and now you're exludin' me from from your prisssy little  _Screw Thanos Royally_ party just 'cuz I happen to be a unique piece a sophisticated cyber-biology?" Shaking his hand menacingly at Peter, he snarled, "Screw you, Quill!"

"Whoa,  _whoa!"_ Peter actually got up, stumbling backwards a little. "Rocket! This isn't some kinda personal attack, all right? I'm just  _saying,_ you happen to stand out a little more than the rest of us!" Rocket opened his mouth like he was going to respond, but Peter cut him off. "And I don't know how to fix that without holo-tech, and even if we could get a hold of some, if anybody broke the image generator in a fight, we'd all be totally  _fucked."_

Rocket visibly deflated, fur flattening as his shoulders went limp. Scuffing the table lightly with his toenails, he grumbled, "Swearin' in front of the kid. Real nice."

"Am Groo?" Peter glanced down at Groot, who was squirming excitedly and grinning hopefully up at Peter.

"No. Okay, no. Just... not happening." Peter sighed. "Even  _I'm_ not dumb enough to bring you into this."

Drax reached down over Groot's chair and patted his bristly, bushy... Well, Peter knew it wasn't  _technically_ hair, but "hair" sounded better than "a rat's nest of vines and sprigs and other weird stuff." "It will be all right," Drax murmured. Which was still pretty much the same level of noise as talking for the rest of them. "You grow faster and stronger each day." Groot smiled up at Drax. "Soon, you will probably grow smarter as well." That left the little guy looking confused and insulted, so Peter brought the rest of them back on topic.

"Anyway, I'm thinking body paint for you two-- " He jabbed a finger towards Gamora, then Drax. "Proooobably some thick robes. With hoods. And for me." He chewed his lower lip, glancing up and thinking for a second. Hey, he didn't have a statue or anything. Yet. So the recognition issue wasn't in play for him. Shrugging, he offered, "... Shave and a haircut?"

Rocket scoffed. "So just the haircut."

"What?" Peter squinted blearily at Rocket.

"You already shaved, dumbass." Rocket slouched lazily back into his chair. "Thought it was kinda weird, wantin' to make yourself look even balder, but hey, far be it from me to try and understand your weird, humie groomin' rituals."

Peter frowned, pawing at his beard. Er, chin. Wait. Frowning, he fumbled a bit, patting his face and furrowing his brow in confusion. "I didn't shave."

"Wait." Rocket's grin started leaning more towards lethal. "You're tellin' me you woke up lookin' like you had a baby's ass glued to your jaw? That was not a manglin' of physically appearance you intentionally did to yourself?"

Peter's voice came out a little more high pitched than he would've liked it to. "No!"

Rocket stared at Peter for a good five seconds, then threw back his head and gave another one of those forced, obnoxious,  _totally fake_ laughs. Then, after miming like he was wiping away tears-- which he  _wasn't_ \-- Rocket snorted. "All right, Quill. You're just lucky that put me in a good mood. I'll  _entertain_ the idea of bein' your stupid tournament security guard."

Peter crossed his arms bitterly as he grumbled a very dry, "Thanks."

Rocket smirked. "Don't mention it."

"Peter." Gamora folded her arms over the table, giving him a meaningful look. For a second, he felt like he was on trial for something. But he remembered that, thankfully, her ultra-questioning demeanor wasn't about him being a cheating scumbag. Y'know--  _yet._ "Assuming we  _do_ get through security, how are we going to make it through the first round without having to kill anyone?"

Peter swallowed. Huh. "Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you." He leaned forward, giving Gamora a look intent enough to match hers. "... I  _totally_ didn't think of that."

" _Peter,"_ Gamora groaned.

"I know, I know! But, uh... " He swallowed, snapping his fingers, hoping the gesture might cause some sudden explosion of genius . "Oh! You said they don't want to be there, right?"

" _Some_ competitors are unwilling, yes." Gamora shook her head. "But not all of them. And I doubt we'll be allowed to fraternize beforehand to determine which of them are being forced to enter." 

Drax nodded thoughtfully. "Though that could be beneficial. It is far easier to shed the blood of those you know nothing about."

Peter raised his eyebrows, glancing around in a "You hearing this?" kind of way before turning back to Drax. "... Thanks for the, uh... words of encouragement."

Drax grinned with an appropriate amount of creepiness. "You are welcome."

"Okay, so... "Peter eased back into his chair, cupping his chin (and  _shit,_ Rocket was totally right about his peach fuzz mysteriously disappearing, and he was definitely going to look into that/kill whoever sheared him in his sleep as soon as this little staff meeting was over.) "We can't form a master plan with the people who don't wanna be there, and we can't  _kill_ anyone." He shrugged. "I mean, we  _shouldn't_ kill anyone. Since we're supposed to be saving people. Kissing babies. Guarding the Galaxy."

Drax made a disappointed sigh that reminded Peter of an animal who'd been begging all night, only to realize he would  _not_ be given any delicious people food. 

"Okay, well-- " Peter shrugs. "I mean, we shouldn't kill anyone  _unless_ they're certified creeps who, like, commit genocide and kill small, adorable animals for fun."

"Yes!" Drax let out an approving laugh. "Excellent."

"Ahm Grshooh!" Groot piped up approvingly, evidently trying to eat whatever Rocket had left lying around, even though Peter was pretty sure the little guy was  _supposed_ to live off of sunshine and good vibes. Or... something like that.

Peter grinned tiredly. "Glad we worked that out."

"What about the ones who  _aren't_ child killers?" Gamora leaned back in her chair, but the movement was stiff and rigid. He was totally tempted to give her a back rub after this was over, but thankfully, got the feeling that this wasn't the best time to bring up that offer. 

"Okay, uh... Rocket!" Peter turned towards the guy, bracing his hands against the table. "Think you can do a little snooping, find out who's willingly getting into this thing, presumably the offspring of Darth Vader's gross, half-raisin boss?" He'd made the mistake of using the words "Darth" and "Vader" several times before finally getting sick of all the questioning looks and sitting everyone down so he could  _force them_ to view the pinnacle of Terran cinema firsthand. Peter had insisted it held up great _,_ even when viewed in space, on an actual space ship. Pretty much nobody else agreed. 

Rocket scoffed. "Whaddya think I've been doin' for the past five minutes? Ain't like I can listen to you yammer without some kinda distraction."

"Ohh-kay. I'm guessing that's handled." Peter swallowed. "Now..." And he realized he wasn't in the best company to be asking this, but hey. Might as well try. "How do we make someone seem dead without actually killing them?" 

Drax, Rocket, and Groot all gave Peter pretty much the same bewildered-and-or-disgruntled expression he knew was coming. But Gamora seemed like she might actually have something up her sleeve. And no, he wasn't going to use that metaphor on her again. Even though he made sure she got it after the Thanos thing.

" _Aviorian Vitrium_ ," she muttered. 

They all turned to her.

"What?" Drax murmured. Well, his version of murmuring. Which was sort of like quietly shouting.

"Aviorian Vitrium," Gamora repeated. "It's a poison. Virtually undetectable, tasteless, and it can be absorbed through cuts or even prolonged skin contact."

Peter watched Gamora for a moment, then carefully stated, "... You got the part where we  _don't_ kill everyone, right?"

She gave him a flat glower. "I wasn't finished." Snatching Rocket's PAD out of his paws, she flicked aside his "research" and pulled up an information page. Holding it out for Peter to see, she widened her eyes expectantly. "See? In small enough doses, it's non-lethal. We'll keep packets of it on us at all times and administer the doses once we've tired out whoever we're up against. Or, if we're outmatched, we can fake an injury, use it on ourselves, and recover within a few days." She smiled, and it wasn't the disturbingly-enthusiastic-about-hurting-people kind that Drax was prone to. It was more the kind that made Peter's stomach do a frightening, flipping motion that left him unsure of what to do with himself for a second. "It can take effect in a matter of moments. We just have to make it look believable."

Peter nodded. "Great! That's... " He beamed stupidly at Gamora, not wanting to admit how much he hoped she'd smile again.  _That_ ... That was just gonna stay between him and him alone. "Great. I think we can do that."

"... If we must," Drax sighed, sounding a lot more disappointed about not getting to decapitate people than a savior of the galaxy reasonably ought to. But hey, Peter figured they could always work on that.

Hopping up from his chair again, he clapped his hands together. "So. How long we got before this thing kicks off?"

Gamora started to type rapidly into the PAD, but Rocket snatched it back before she pulled anything up, grumbling, "Gimme that." Rapidly swiping across the screen with his nimble little paw-fingers, he snarled, "Seriously. If you guys are gonna go around pilferatin' my crap, at least use it right." He jerked a thumb at Gamora. "You believe she used NOVAsearch for that? They're gonna be over our asses in a couple a days. They got trackers in each quadrant, you know. Total invasion of privacy. It's flat out  _dees-_ gustin'." He paused, getting caught up in whatever he was typing before adding, "Oh, and witnessin' her extranet illiteracy? Also disgustin'." 

Gamora rolled her eyes up as her lids drooped, exhaling through her nose in what was probably a very polite way of forcing herself not to snap Rocket in half like a furry popsicle stick. 

"I will procure disguises from the nearest purveyor of such things," Drax announced, sounding weirdly excited about getting clothes, given that he avoided covering anything from the waist-up like it would make him spontaneously combust.

"Am Groo!" Groot smacked his stubby vines on the table excitedly. 

"Of course you may come," Drax cooed. But, you know. Loudly. Guy had really taken a shining to mini-Groot, but Peter guessed anybody still sore over their kid being...  _gone..._ would have the same kind of weakness. 

"Okay." Peter pursed his lips thoughtfully. "A tiny nudist and a guy who's allergic to shirts picking out our disguises. Which have to be super concealing. That's gonna work."

Drax smiled. "I experience no negative physical reactions when I come into contact with shirts." 

Peter had to take a second to close his eyes and  _breathe_ after that one.

"However," Drax went on, "I agree. I believe we will prove to be extremely apt at this task."

Peter didn't really have the heart to reconsider who to send on this GoodWill mission after hearing  _that_ . 

Plus, he was also kind of tempted to see just how bad whatever outfits they came up with were gonna be.

They had to make this deadly infiltration of a enemy's murder festival fun in  _some_ way, right?

 

 

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Peter bit his lip, gingerly thumbing at the strand of Gamora's hair he had gripped between his fingers.

" _Yes,_ Peter." Gamora sighed, glancing over her shoulder at him with an irritated look. She didn't get mad at him as much anymore, which he had to admit, was pretty refreshing. But she always seemed to either be totally on board with whatever he had planned or absolutely disgusted by him (Or whatever he just said, or whatever he happened to think was a good idea.) And, usually, he didn't figure out  _why_ she seemed grossed out for a good few seconds, and when he did, he felt like a complete idiot. 

"It's just..." He shrugged. "It's so... " He pressed his lips together, glancing around uneasily. "It... Long hair looks good on you, okay?"

Gamora snorted. "You're only saying that because you've never seen me without it."

"Yeah, but..." Peter let his lower lip jut out a bit, head leaning to one side as he brushed his hand across Gamora's shoulders, pushing her hair aside. "I've seen it... Y'know. Up. And stuff."

"Why are you so attached to my hair?" She turned again to give him a bewildered, tired, and thankfully genuine smile. "It's my hair. Not yours."

"Hey." Peter lifted a hand, one finger raised sternly. "As captain, and leader, you're my subordinate. Which means, on some level, I have say in what you can and cannot do."

"What's your point?" Gamora's smile grew exasperatedly "You're the one who told me to cut it."

"I never said cut!" Peter swung his arms out from his sides, shoulders hunching defensively. "I said... 'do something with'. That's totally different! I meant, like, a bun. Or... two. I dunno." He let his arms flop uselessly against himself. "Whatever you wanna do."

"I want to cut it," Gamora stated. 

Peter locked eyes with her. "So... what?" He wagged the knife around a bit. "How much you want me to take off? An inch?"

"No!" Gamora made grabby hands at him. "Just-- here! Let me do it."

"Oh, come on! I was just... " Peter sighed. "Okay. I'll cut it."

Gamora gave a stiff, approving nod. "Good." She gingerly pushed her hair back over her shoulders. "... I always wanted short hair."

Peter hesitated, stopping in the middle of reaching for a strand. "... You did?"

"Yes." She made a noise that would've been sad if she were somebody else, but since she was Gamora, it just sounded dismissive. "Long hair may not have been convenient in battle, but Thanos insisted." She pawed at the purplish tips and Peter wondered if there was a reason behind that color. And just like that, he couldn't wait to hack it off.

"Hold still." Gingerly grabbing a few long, wavy locks, Peter carefully sliced through the strands. Then a few more, piece by piece, till the floor under their feet was starting to look like shag carpeting. A really freaky one, made out of human...  _ish_ ... hair _._ "You know, I probably could've gotten some scissors for this."

Gamora shook her head. "It isn't that important Peter." 

She had a point, and Peter knew it. The tournament started within twenty four hours, and it had taken Rocket forever just to find any of that sleepytime poison Gamora mentioned. And that wasn't even taking into account how much they ended up fighting over disguises. Seriously-- apparently they all had drastically different opinions when it came to what made you look like a space villain. 

It took him a few tries to get what was left of Gamora's hair to look even, but for a last-minute chop shop, he thought it was decent enough. Gamora, at least, didn't seem to hate it, instead running her hands through it a few times and giving another one of those smiles that made Peter feel like he actually did something right for once.

"I like it." Easing up from the chair, she pawed again at her hair to get the last few strands free, then grabbed Peter's shoulder, pulling herself up and planting a kiss on his cheek in one smooth movement. "Thank you."

Peter grinned, just sort of basking in the feeling of  _her_ , and not all the stuff he tended to think of or dwell on or freak out about right after something like this happened. "Don't mention it."

Gamora stepped out of the common room and Peter watched as she headed down the hall, wondering what the hell was wrong with him when all he felt was confusion and a little bit of something he couldn't put his finger on. 

Shaking his head, he leaned forward and started scuffing the piles of hair under the outcropping of his bunk.

It was gonna be a big day tomorrow.

And, more importantly, it would be a  _long_ one.

  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bet you thought youd seen the last of me

"Okay, that coulda gone better," Peter admitted.  
  
"Peter," Gamora warned, and Peter tried really hard to actually listen this time instead of focusing on the chop shop he'd turned her hair into. "That was a disaster."  
  
"Uh, yeah, okay, but... We caught 'em off guard!" Peter argued.  
  
"You _vomited_ on that Stafaran Warrior," Gamora countered, then looked like she was reliving that horrifying moment in excruciating detail. Maybe in slow-mo, too. "I did not know Terrans could do that on command."  
  
"Yeah, well, we can't," Peter admitted. "I mean, not unless you're talking about Regan MacNeil."  
  
"That does not sound like a pleasant person." Gamora scowled and crossed her arms, which made Peter think that his massive screw up basically denied her the first place ribbon in the county fair of killing people.  
  
Okay, maybe not the worst thing to be bad at.  
  
There were a few seconds of silence, and Peter could hear Rocket and Groot arguing around the table, accompanied by a high-pitched... _shing_ of Drax sharpening his favorite knife. At least, Peter thought it was his favorite. He had a pretty good chance of being right, at least, since experience showed all knives were Drax's favorite.  
  
"It wasn't, uh... " Peter shrugged, trying to get back on topic. "I mean. I'm just... not really sure what happened out there."  
  
"The fact that we were discovered to be intruders within the first round of the competition?" Gamora asked, then added, "Or the vomiting?"  
  
"Yeah. The... _that_." Peter sunk lower in the pilot's seat, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling and checking out the loose wiring. He acted like he was actually worried some of it might be worth a second of concern before wriggling to sit up straight and squeezing the edges of the armrests. "It just hit me. It's not usually so... outta nowhere."  
  
"Usually?" Gamora tilted her head back slightly. "You mean... like when you first wake up?"  
  
Peter started. "Wha—You? You know about that?"  
  
Gamora glanced aside, like she wasn't sure if Peter was messing with her. "Yes? You are not very quiet."  
  
"Jesus," Peter muttered. "And nobody asked me about it _why?_ "  
  
"You humies are disgustin'!" Rocket chimed in from the other room, pretty much cementing in the idea that, if Gamora had heard him, so had everybody else. "Frankly, you're a bioligical mystery to me. Whatever various liquids come spewin' outta your yap is your business."  
  
"We had assumed a small amount of bile would not be enough to hinder the efforts of a valiant warrior such as yourself, Quill," Drax tacked on. "Regardless of the orifice from which it is spewing."  
  
Peter inhaled through his nose, sitting up straighter and placing a hand on his chest. "I'm touched." He frowned, pressing the pads of his fingers into the area a little—why did it feel flabby?—only to drag himself back mentally in time to catch what Gamora was saying next.  
  
"I suppose it wasn't all in vain," she admitted, all reluctantly, like it was really doing a number on her pride. "The Nova Fleet _did_ receive our distress signal in time to prevent you from getting decapitated."  
  
"Dont'cha love when that happens?" Rocket piped up again cheerfully. "Oh, uh, by the way, the sapling says you outta get your pukin' issues checked out. Maybe you can find a vet or somethin' that'll actually understand your backworld anatomies."  
  
"Oh, hardy, har, har." Peter scoffed. "I'm fine. Tell Groot to suck it up—it's just a little... projectile vomiting!"  
  
"Hey, you wanna see him cry?" Rocket laughed a dark, pitying laugh. "That's your problem, buddy."  
  
"Am Groooo!" A voice whined immediately in response to that, and Peter was pretty sure the translation would be something like "I will weep over you in your sleep with big, dumb, brown tree-baby eyes until you suck it up and consider letting somebody dissect you. For science."  
  
Peter groaned, bending forward and closing his eyes for a minute. "I'll... Y'know. I'll think about it."  
  
Rocket snorted. "Pushover."

 

* * *

 

 

"We, uh... Don't get many Terrans out here," the nurse admitted, strapping Peter into one of those do-all, miracle-performing arm cuffs. Well, it either performed miracles or just took his vitals ridiculously fast, but hey, same thing.  
  
"Oh yeah?" he grinned at her, noting that she was actually pretty cute. Long legs, tight little body, pale turquoise skin....  
  
Shaking his head, he told himself this seriously wasn't the time. He was pretty sure he and Gamora were still on super thin ice, plus he felt like he might be minutes away from learning that he had the star of the next _Alien_ movie incubating in his guts.  
  
"You're actually the first I've ever seen," the nurse went on, but Peter was starting to zone out. This wasn't the first speech he'd heard about his "rare" heritage, and a guy can only take so many sugar-coated jabs about how he's a credit to his ass-backwards race before he wants to snap. And frankly, garnering a few brownie points wasn't worth soaking up this chick's condescending spiel like it actually complimented him.  
  
Still, he tried to smile and nod every thirty seconds or so till she finally got back on topic. "Chorionic gonadotropin levels are a little high..."  
  
"'Bless you," Peter offered, grinning. When the nurse gave him a blank stare, he pulled it back a little and furrowed his brow. "So... What the hell does that mean?"  
  
"Oh, it could be nothing!" She beamed back at him, cheerfully unbuckling Peter from the beeping metal deathtrap on his arm. "But it could also be something relatively serious. I believe the illness can also be common in Xandarian males, as well as Terrans."  
  
Peter's forced grin shrank a little. "And what, uh... 'illness' is that?"  
  
Without missing a beat, the nurse nodded, smiled again, and said, "Testicular cancer."  
  
Peter felt a little like someone just kicked him in said testicular area. "Wait, s-seriously?" Well, shit. He kind of wanted to laugh, but at the same time, he felt sicker than he had been in months. The idea was about as ridiculous as it was _not **fucking** funny_.  
  
"Oh, don't worry." She tried to reassure him, and for now, Peter was gonna let himself believe whatever she wanted to say. "It's very rarely fatal, and 'cancer' is considered a much bigger threat on your homeworld than it is in this system."  
  
"Right," Peter muttered. He wasn't sure what he expected to find out when he got here—but it sure as hell wasn't something like this. His head was more or less reeling and he was very seriously considering just bolting right back to the Milano, flooring it into the next quadrant, and pretending none of this ever happened.  
  
"Of course—" And, she just kept talking. "—the diagnostics cuff can only give us a rudimentary picture of what's causing your symptoms, so we can't make any definite conclusions yet. If you'll just wait for the doctor to come in, he'll be able to tell you exactly what's going on." She reached out and patted his shoulder, still making that disturbing face. "I'm sure you'll be fine."  
  
"Yay," Peter croaked. Rubbing at his face as the nurse let herself out, he slumped forward, elbows against his knees, legs hanging off the exam table as he tried to figure out whether or not he actually had to hurl or if he just wasn't taking the news so well. Not that he thought he could blame himself, what with the nurse's "terrific" bedside manner.  
  
He guessed that's just what he got for going to a free clinic.  
  
When the doctor _did_ make up his mind about stopping by, it had been at least half an hour. Probably more. By that point in time, Peter'd already considered just jacking half the expensive medical equipment he could carry and throwing himself out the window. Of course, knowing he'd probably keel over without medical attention gave him some pretty decent incentive to stay put. He guessed he could just steal enough to pay for whatever operation they wanted him to get, but what'd be the point if he'd just have to come crawling back to a joint like this? No way in hell would he entrust that... area to some trigger happy surgeon in a dark Reijak alleyway.  
  
"So." The old man skimmed through his PADD without even glancing up at Peter. "Symptoms seem to be excessive vomiting, slight weight gain, elevated levels of chorionic gonadotropin, progesterone, estrogen..."  
  
Peter glared at the guy, sitting up reluctantly. "Is this supposed to reassure me or something?" He glanced at his wrist, staring the little dot of darkened skin where the cuff took blood, and feeling pretty unnerved that all that info came from just a minute or two of contact with his skin. But hey, on the bright side, he couldn't imagine it taking much longer to figure out whether or not he was following in the family footsteps, so to speak. He winced, making an ugly face. Ugh. Trying to make a joke out of that kind of _event_ —a joke about any of this, honestly—made him feel more than a little gross. "So... Do I have..." The knot in his throat cut him off, and he swallowed noisily. "Am I gonna have to get anything amputated or what?"  
  
"You don't have cancer." The doctor practically cut him off, and Peter let out an embarrassingly relieved puff of air. "However, I'm... not really sure how to inform you of what we've found here."  
  
"Uh..." Peter let his mouth hang slightly open.  
  
"The first thing we did was determine that there was no evidence of cancer in your body," Yoda M.D. went on. "At which point we looked for a reason as to why your hormones were so imbalanced. Your records on the NOVA database were sent over and examined, and show that you are biologically male, half Terran, half unknown paternal lineage. After deducing that there was no rejection of genetic code from either parent taking place, which can cause similar reactions with the, ah, 'internal plumbing', we compared a bio-scan taken of you after your incarceration... " Peter winced, somehow bothered by the fact that this old prune-bag now knew about his little visit to the Kyln. "... to the one given to you today, and realized that the offending hormones were more present than usual in the initial scan, but in the more recent scan, have increased to an alarmingly high level."  
  
The geezer shook his head, kind of excitedly, and Peter inched away, feeling more than a little disturbed by how _into_ all this he suddenly seemed. "Mr. Quill, in all the planets and systems that have been discovered—really, this is incredible, coming from a modern age where our medical database is so massive that diagnosing a patient is normally instantaneous... " He mopped the sweat off his brow a little, and Peter suddenly felt the most appropriate need to puke he'd experienced yet. "I have never encountered a case as unique as yours."  
  
"... Thanks?" Peter thinned his lips together, looking away as he shifted his weight from side to side. "Is that a good thing? Why do I—Why do I feel like that's not a good thing?"  
  
"I suppose, uh... " The windbag just kind of gestured aimlessly and Peter felt his stomach twist into a knot. "I suppose that depends entirely on your interpretation."  
  
"Okay." Peter squeezed his hands together, shifting his foot around dumbly, trying to find some place to put it. He stayed silent for a minute, starting to bounce his knee nervously. "What am I 'interpreting', exactly?"  
  
"I would like to make absolutely sure that I give you a correct diagnosis," the old guy insisted, walking up to Peter and trying to push him onto his back with one crotchety hand. "Roll up your shirt, please."  
  
Peter wanted to make some idiotic crack about his ripped abs, or tell the guy to back the hell off, but weirdly enough (or maybe not weirdly at all) he felt a little too numb to try and stop him. He stared up at the ceiling as the doc pulled out something he'd never seen before; some kind of curved metal shower head with a PADD display sticking out of the top. He stared at it, slightly creeped out. And that was before it _squirted_ something on him.  
  
"Lie still, please!" croaked the geezer, and Peter sort of wanted to kick his teeth in.  
  
Still, he figured that clocking the guy and bolting wasn't worth it. Yet. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed clumsily at the side of the table, holding still as old quack pressed the greased up torture device into his gut over and over, muttering to himself—but the only words Peter managed to catch were "plantigrade, likely bipedal" and "three, maybe four cycles". Which didn't exactly fill him with a sense of reassurance.  
  
Around the point when Peter felt like he could do a pretty good impression of Old Faithful if the guy jabbed him in the stomach one more time, he backed off. "Well, I think I have all the evidence I could ask for."  
  
Peter gritted his teeth. "Great." He made a move to wipe the gunk off his middle, only to find it had already dissipated. "What's the prognosis, exactly?" Really, he couldn't put his finger on it, but something about all the build up had him almost as disturbed as the idea of dying. Which would be saying a lot, since normally, dying didn't scare him all that much. Maybe it was just the slow, painful variety. "Not to be ungrateful, Dr. Magoo, but I'd really appreciate you gettin' to the point."  
  
The martian senior citizen held up his ancient hands apologetically. "Er, right, right." He paused again, and Peter thought his ears went little... _fuzzy_ when he said the next part.  
  
"You're pregnant."  
  
"Okay." Peter said it immediately, kind of the way you say stuff when you know someone's lying straight to your face. "Wait. No. _What?_ "  
  
The doctor chuckled, and Peter had to breathe in deep to stop hating him quite so much. "You know, if you were female, this would be less than remarkable. But as I said earlier, you're a unique case. I would suspect that your father's lineage has made this possible, altering your biology later in life somehow, but... I don't have a proper explanation for it, really. It's unprecedented." The doctor slipped his hands carefully into his pockets. "We've done every test we could, and even if the hormone imbalance had been due to something else, we would have seen an entirely different picture in the abdominal cavity."  
  
"Seen," Peter echoed dimly.  
  
"Yes, seen." The doctor pulled out the magic wand thing again, pressing the on button so he could flip through the slides, showing Peter a pinkish jellybean that apparent proved he wasn't wrong. "There it is."  
  
"No," Peter said, because that actually _did_ make sense.  
  
"Yes," the old guy countered, then tacked on, "Congratulations." Probably just to be a dick.  
  
"No." Peter shook his head, sliding off the table and edging around the wrinkly creep like a paranoid crab. "Nooooo. Nope. Bye."  
  
"Wait!" The doc reached out to try and snatch his jacket sleeve or something, but Peter was already scrambling down the hall, starting to sweat a little when he realized the guy was _fast_ for someone who probably had great, great grandkids and god did he not want to even think of the word "kid" ever again. Stumbling into the waiting room, he cringed violently when the guy shouted from somewhere behind him, "Mr Quill, please! If you're planning on carrying to term, you need to consider a prenatal vitamin plan!"  
  
He blanked out for a minute, or ten, because the next thing he knew he was all the way back on the Milano, checking to make sure everyone important was on it before blasting away from that system as fast as his ship could take him.  
  
"Peter, are you all right?" Gamora placed a hand on his shoulder after a minute of furious driving, and he jerked like someone dumped cold water in his face. Licking his lips, he scanned the horizon, as if it would tell him magically how to explain his sudden road rage and huge amount of sweat.  
  
After fifteen seconds of silence, he dug his teeth into the back of his bottom lip, eyes firmly up ahead. "What?" He nodded dumbly. "Oh, yeah, yeah. Just, uh... Got caught lifting some old broad's bracelet. Kinda threw me."  
  
"She... _threw_ you?" Gamora stared, genuinely alarmed. "Was she larger than you?" Peter let out a bark of a laugh, realizing this was at least part of what he needed.  
  
"You know what? Yeah." He nodded again, stiffly. "Yeah, she did. And I'm gonna go patch myself up. Take the wheel, will ya?"  
  
Gamora did, and she'd probably give it to Rocket after a minute, but as long as Groot wasn't driving, Peter didn't care. He trudged past Drax as quietly as he could, hoping to avoid any further questions about the appointment, and whether he required an elaborate, warrior's funeral, then slipped into the head, locking the door tight behind him before slumping against it and giving a massive exhale. It was almost like he never left, and hey, maybe if he tried really, really hard, Peter could pretend exactly that was completely true.  
  
So he did, for a minute or two, but he had to admit, he sucked at ignoring stuff that bugged him, and he didn't have anybody here he could punch or give lip to in order to distract himself, so he was more or less stuck stewing over this horrible, disturbing, almost-weird-enough-to-be-funny-but-not-quite... thing.  
  
Peter'd seen a lot of strange stuff in space, but even a billion miles from Terra, with planets full of people who had more variety than a bag of skittles, Peter had never heard of anything like this happening. Of course, he kind of had to let out a slightly hysterical snort when he realized that, if it was gonna happen to anybody, it'd happen to him. He frowned, gritting his teeth and feeling defiant, all of a sudden. Maybe he could just... prove that old windbag and all his grossly invasive medical equipment wrong, even if it was just to himself, in the latrine of his own ship.  
  
He started by grabbing the hem of his shirt, peeling it up over his head and dropping it on the floor, not looking up at the mirror till he shimmied out of his pants, too. With the kinda life he'd been leading, Peter didn't look in at his reflection every day. Well, yeah, okay, he did, but not that hard. Not like he was looking for changes. But now, scrutinizing his own face in the mirror, he still felt more or less struck by the lack of his beard. He was telling himself it'd grow back, but now he wasn't sure if he believed that. He looked all baby-faced, like he'd never even had peach fuzz. And after some hellish years of puberty on a Ravager ship, he felt like he'd earned that face-fluff, damn it. The fact that it was gone seemed like a tragedy.  
  
He slapped his palms against his cheeks, wincing at how bare they felt, then let his arms drop at his sides, reluctantly glancing down to make sure the mirror wasn't lying to him. He'd rather believe that the fraud at the clinic got to him, and that he was seeing things than admit he might be getting a little soft. Except, when he pressed his finger tips against his chest, it felt tender enough to make him hiss a little, and wasn't exactly firm...  
  
And yeah, he wasn't totally comfortable using certain terminology, even by himself, with the door locked tight, but his... chest... nub area was feeling more or less... Not normal? Not that any of this meant the doctor was right, just that it... suddenly seemed a little more like he might not have been a hundred percent wrong.  
  
He took a deep breath and shook his head, blowing the air out between pursed lips as he lifted his arms and slowly, dumbly moved to brace his hands against the back of his head. Okay. Sudden lack of manly facial hair. Sore boobs. Sore hips—sore _everything_ , actually. And a shit-load of puking. Which doesn't mean a person is pregnant—doesn't mean _he's_ pregnant.  
  
Although "pregnant" kind of made sense.  
  
Feeling a sudden rush of dizziness, Peter fell with his back against the wall, dragging his palms over his face before peeking out at his reflection through his fingers.  
  
"Ooookaaaay," he admitted. Then he added mentally, _I'm fucked._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have never seen american horror story and never plan to
> 
> also i changed a slight element in the first chapter to set up a new option in terms of what to do with the story blah blah no one cares its a fucking mpreg story


	4. Chapter 4

The whole crew was asleep before Peter felt safe taking the cassette out of the tape deck. It wasn't like he was shy about toting it around when he went basically anywhere, but this time, it felt a lot more... personal. And considering what the whole thing stood for already in his mind, that seemed to be saying a lot. Plus, he didn't want anybody to see if he completely lost it. Sure, it's not like that happened a  _lot_ (or ever)—he sure as hell wasn't trying to break his almost life-long streak of holding it together—but, you know. Better safe than sorry.

Lying on his back in a cramped bunk probably wasn't the most private place to have a deep, introspective thought session, but Peter didn't exactly have his choice of venues at that exact second. Actually, as long as he didn't have half the inmates of Space Alcatraz clinging to him while they slept, he was gonna think of it as "good enough."

But maybe he was trying a little too hard to look on the bright side lately. Peter wasn't gonna lie, it was sort of his forte. But lately, he might have been doing a decent job of tricking everyone else into thinking he was okay, but he was having really hard time trying to trick himself. Groaning, Peter shook his head and dragged the heel of his palm over his sweaty forehead. Ugh. This wasn't a meltdown yet, but that didn't mean he wasn't headed towards one.

He took an ugly, shaky inhale, slipping the headphones over his ears and letting his head loll to one side. He started mouthing the first few lines of the song on instinct, but after "Maybe I shouldn't think of you as mine", he just lost focus. Breathing starting to get sharp and weird again, he flipped over onto his side, lifting the Walkman up to eye-level.

"Okay," he rasped. "Listen. I know... I know I've been through some serious shit—like... way worse than this. Probably." He paused and sniffed. "Well. I could've  _died,_ so... Yeah. Yeah, definitely worse. But... " Peter felt his eyes prick and start to sting, and his voice choked up. Honestly, he'd never felt more scared in his life, just in that one split second where he stopped denying that he was totally out of ideas. "I-If I ever needed a sign, or... just  _something_ like that, f-from you... " He felt his chest heave one last time and he winced slowly. "It... It'd be right now."

He waited, holding his breath even though the whole time he knew he didn't really expect anything to happen. Maybe, a few months ago, he could've convinced himself that, when he'd seen her, it wasn't some cosmically fucked up illusion brought on by a purple doom rock, but he'd moved past that. Came back to reality again. And sure enough, even though he thought the pain in his chest was building up to  _something,_ after a whole minute of silence, all he heard was Todd Rundgren promising that he'd "never wanna make you change" for him.

Some sick little part of Peter wanted to throw the whole tapedeck at the floor, but the millisecond after thinking that, he felt completely freaked out and disgusted that he'd even picture doing something like that.  _Ever._ He slid the headphones down around his shoulders, clipping the tapedeck into his belt and sitting up. After digging his fingers into the lining of the bunk for a second, he got up and started padding through the ship. Uncomfortably aware that he wasn't the most light-footed guy in the world, Peter decided to try and be grateful for Drax's snoring. Actually, thinking that just made Peter grimace. Frankly, he didn't even know why he kept trying to cheer himself up. He'd always been freaking amazing at it, sure, but it was always easier to do for people. And this was different.

 _Way_ different.

Nobody woke up, thank god—even when he scrambled up the ladder, with all those disjointed  _clanging_ sounds reverberating around. He glanced down into the dim light, just to be sure, then slunk across the cockpit and slipped into his seat. Groaning, he leaned back against the cushy leather headrest, then started staring at the blinking dots littered across the ceiling.

"What now?" he demanded. At this point, he actually suspected a voice whispering in his ear out of nowhere would be more disturbing than comforting, so he decided not to hope for an answer. Instead, he glanced out the window, watching the stars move slowly past as the ship's autopilot started to take it by Xandar.

Huh. Been a while since he saw that place. Frankly, Peter didn't feel crazy about the idea of heading back any time soon. Sure, it was a given that, without any reputation and/or chance of attracting trouble whatsoever, there was absolutely no possibility of fun for any of them there, but Peter guessed it had to have some other appeals, like...  _sentimentality_.

Especially relating to the current shit festival Peter had going on.

But... maybe he could go to Xandar. For old time's sake. Even though he told himself not to worry about anything not directly related to Ronan and the day where they all saved an entire planet's collective asses. Because that was the only memory he had of Xandar that didn't suck now. All right, maybe he was blocking specific things out, but that was okay! Because, even though the stuff he was trying not to remember was completely his fault, he didn't  _deserve_ to feel shitty about the guy. Really, in the scheme of things, he barely even knew Peter at all.

And then, of course, it hit him that, when he'd basically never needed a distraction more in his life, here was the golden goddamn Wonka's ticket of taking his mind of shit, waving its big, blue space balls in his face. Letting out a pitchy, almost silent laugh, Peter disengaged the autopilot, starting to drift toward Xandar. He didn't change the speed whatsoever, and kept his ears pricked for any sign of movement below, or waking up, or not sleeping anymore, but the crew was out cold. In fact, they were possibly dead with how sound asleep they were acting, but Peter was gonna worry about that later. Parking in one of the less ritzy ports, he scrambled away from the controls. He dug his boots out from under the control deck and shimmied into them, turning clumsily and trotting back down the ladder.

Feeling grateful that he wasn't dumb enough to consider using the landing pad, Peter opened one of the hatches and crawled out, grabbing onto the wing of the ship for a second before dropping to the ground. Swallowing—the Capitol being a complete ghost town as soon as night hit always freaked him out—Peter yanked his jacket tighter around himself, hurrying out of the port and into the streets.

It took ten minutes, give or take, of walking around looking like the Grand Overlook Hotel had taken its toll on him (seriously, like, the only two Xandarians he saw straight up turned in the opposite directions when they spotted him) before he got to Nova headquarters. The minute he stomped through the doors, though, he just kind of... slowed down and gawked all around the building, feeling kind of overwhelmed as he realized, yeah, he actually did just come here out of the blue. He hadn't been in the building since they left in the newly refurbished Milano, and all that was before Peter found out about...  _this_. He guessed it was kind of poetic he'd come here again, for the first after what happened, trying to find out more.

Actually, no. It wasn't fucking "poetic", it was just a really shitty joke the universe was playing on him, and Peter wasn't exactly amused. Gritting his jaw, he stomped over to the help desk, noting miserably that not even the sudden, awed look the receptionist got on his face could cheer him up. Then Peter saw a pamphlet stacked over to the side with  _the_ statue—the one that made Groot look like an Ent and Rocket look like Ralphie Parker in even furrier jammies—and felt a tiny bit better.

"Uh, what can I do for you, Mister... Mister Quill?" The guy looked a little star-struck, and Peter really couldn't blame him. And just for a second, he wanted to bask in that smug, over-inflated ego sensation. Then he remembered he was going to have to actually ask the thing he'd been dreading, and his mood swung back down almost instantly.

"Yeah, um... " Peter swallowed, shrugging weakly. "I hear you guys have.... I mean, you have info about the... You know." He blew some air out between his lips, staring down at nothing for a second before raising his head again. "The former Corps members who... " He went quiet for a little too long, then remembered to talk again. "Who... didn't... You know.  _Make it_  when Ronan's ship... "

The poor guy got this heartbroken look on his face, and Peter felt shitty for even bringing it up. But before he could analyze his own guilt, the receptionist had already moved on, typing things into his PADD and then glancing back up at Peter. "Did you know the name of—"

"Saal." Peter basically cut him off, then grimaced, realizing he answered way too fast. "That's, uh.... That's his... I mean, it  _was_ his name. Garthan Saal."

"Of course," the guy mumbled, and Peter's stomach started twisting. He thought he heard a clock somewhere in the room start to tick louder and louder and louder until the guy finally spoke up again, drowning it out. "And... what information were you looking for, specifically?"

Peter shrugged again. "I just, uh... " He cleared his throat awkwardly. "I wanted to see his.... place." Peter was so tired and wound up, he almost didn't recognize the 'I don't get Terran slang' blank stare he got in response. Furrowing his brow, he clarified. "His... apartment.""

"Ah." The receptionist nodded slowly, eyes darting back down to the screen. "... He lived in the central district in lot 17, about ten blocks to the east of this building. He was in constuct 3, apartment number 209... "

"That's... That's good, thanks." Peter tapped at the desk, lips thinned together.

"There typically aren't visitors allowed at this hour." The receptionist gave him a worried look. "If you're trying to locate his relatives, a better approach might be—"

"No, I... " Peter shook his head. "That's okay. I just wanted to... take a look at it, or... something. From... afar." Except not really.

The guy grinned, kind of like he was relieved that Peter wasn't planning on breaking and entering. Sounded like it'd be a real inconvenience, having to arrest one of your planet's saviors, but Peter wasn't going to try anything that stupid.

Okay, actually, more like he wasn't gonna do anything as stupid as getting caught.

Before muttering a "thanks", Peter scrawled down the address, then headed out again. He was pretty familiar with the area, even when the whole place was creepy and empty and barely lit up. Being someone who was used to cities where there wasn't any power management, all the signs and fountains and shit being shut off for the night definitely stuck him with a creepy vibe. But hey; he guessed it was fitting.

After a while, he just tilted his head to look up at the skyline, watching the stars and feeling basically half sure that somebody on the ship was going to wake up, see him gone, and call him. Or, just as likely, pop up out of nowhere and physically drag him away. Just something to completely fuck over his depressing little mission before it even started. Of course, the whole reason he was thinking of any of this crap was probably because he really hoped something would end up making him turn back.

Nothing did, though. He made it the whole ten blocks, and up the fire escape (it just  _figured_  Saal would live in one of those "press a button and talk to someone to get in" areas; it also figured Peter would've been too drunk to remember that the last time he was here) and into the hall's side door. The same door with the good old fashioned padlock, more specifically. After using one of the tools he kept hand to saw through it, he set the thing down on the landing and nudged it aside with his foot. He glanced back for a second before he slipped into the place, stepping lightly past the numbered doors and feeling a catch in his throat when he passed 209. He did a clumsy 180, stumbling and stopping right in front of the door.

Unable to help it, he glanced down the hall both ways, still half positive he was gonna get interrupted. Things never went this... Well, not  _well_ , but... smoothly. Things never went this smoothly for him. Maybe it was different now that he'd gotten himself into a constant state of "fucked", and that made the universe decide that he'd filled up his bullshit quota for the next few months. Actually? Nah. That'd imply there was some actual meaning to what was happening. He made a frustrated face, then shook his head, reaching into his pocket to dig out his code jumbler. Taking a shaky breath, he shorted out the digital lock, then opened the door a crack to squeeze himself inside.

Peter still didn't know what he was expecting, but a part of him felt a little... pissed. It was underwhelming. It was pretty much exactly the same as last time. Same couch and plants and sculptures, and weird, prudish, "high class" shit Saal clearly would've gone gaga over. Some of the crap was in boxes, but most of it was untouched, just sitting under a thin new layer of dust. Peter batted at it, wrinkling his nose, then coughed and fell back on the couch.

"This was so helpful," he grumbled to no one. Or maybe to Saal's ghost.

The same second he though that, he hissed through his teeth. Really, it shouldn't have made his chest pinch the way it did, but that's what happened. And just for the moment, he was a little sick of pretending things that were happening to him weren't actually going on.

Squirming, he flopped back as far as he could, curling a little to one side so he could just stare at the cabinets and shelves. There weren't any pictures, and even if nobody out here seemed all that big on the idea tangible images—and even though Saal would've had literally no reason to hang up a picture of himself, no matter how smug of a bastard he happened to be—Peter kind of wished he had something to look at here. Heaving himself off the couch, he dragged his feet, making his way into the kitchen and leaning on the counters. He glanced down at the little spice rack (at least, that's what he was pretty sure he was looking at) and did manage a dickish little smirk. Saal was the only person he knew who would actually, willingly own something as grandma-ish as that.

He just stared at it for a little while, then straightened up and rubbed his knuckles against his back, shaking his head. Man, what the hell was he doing here? Maybe things would be different if he came here and Saal was still...  _Y'know..._

Well, that could be why he felt like coming in the first place. Peter didn't know Saal all that well, which felt kinda shitty to admit, for a number of reasons. But Peter felt sure he was enough of a stand up, do the right thing, stick in the mud kind of guy to have wanted to help Peter out with this. Even if all he could manage was just a little, like...  _advice_. At least, advice from someone who wouldn't think any less of Peter once he found out the news.

... Mostly because he thought Peter was an untrustworthy harlot who stood him up once, but still. Not the time for those kind of specifics.

Feeling his heart twist a little, he touched the side of his temple lightly, like he was going to rub away a headache. His brain wanted him to flat out state it, so he did: he thought Saal would want him to keep it. Saal would want to take it—the...  _kid,_ that was, assuming that's what Peter was gonna let it turn into one—and Peter would be more than happy to give it to him. Saal would've been great with kids. He'd probably be completely smitten with the idea, and for the first time in a good long while, Peter thought too hard about things that Saal  _would have,_  and his throat burned like he was gonna cry or throw up or both.

"Okay," he whispered shakily. "Okay."

Just because he didn't have some awesome get out of jail free card in the form of Saal, it didn't mean there were no other options. There had to be plenty. And he wasn't going to waste any more time just sitting here and moping. He had to be straight with himself. Just for a minute. Especially since something about this whole one-sided conversation was nagging at him, and he got the same kind of feeling he usually had when he was forgetting something obvious. Forcing himself to glance around the room one last time, he felt his heart jump when his gaze hit the boxes.

"Oh,  _fuck_ . Yes. Yes, yesyesyes _yesss._ "

For once in his life, Peter didn't cover his tracks after a job. Just raced out of the apartment and down the fire escape. Literally all the way back to Nova HQ, till he was slumped over the help desk counter, chest heaving and sides burning with stitches. He waited till he could breathe again—or, at least, he waited until he saw the receptionist's fingers get dangerously close to the security call button—before speaking up.

"R-Relatives," he wheezed.

"Whuh?" the guy choked.

"S-Saal. Garthan." Peter swallowed loudly, slumping forward. "Y-You said he had relatives?" He beamed as he panted, basically one hundred percent hysterical, but the rabid hyena grin faded a little when he actually took in the look on the receptionist's face. "Wh.... " He wheezed, breathing in and out a few times before spitting the rest of the word out. "What?"

The guy sheepishly pecked at his keyboard, glancing up at Peter in a way that basically screamed guilt.

" _What?_ " Peter leaned further over the desk, trying to figure out why the guy was acting so hedgy all of a sudden. "I g-gotta say... the droopy dog routine does  _not_ fill me with optimism."

He watched as the receptionist sighed heavily, folding his limp arms. "It's just that... When I mentioned 'relatives', I meant somewhat distant ones. Denarian Saal did not have any living, direct family. A-And... Those that I was referring to had very little knowledge of Denarian Saal during his life. In fact, they've been notified multiple times to come and collect the belongings in his apartment, but they've mostly ignored the requests." He gave Peter a watery sort of look and Peter deflated a little. "Though I...  _suspect_ you may have already found that part out."

"Uh," said Peter. He just stared for a second, trying to get his brain to work after having his back up plan basically disintegrate. "And you're... sure?"

"Yes." The receptionist nodded stiffly, and there was a pause awkward enough for Peter to consider banging his head on the wall just to mix it up a little. "But... "

Peter felt his stomach lurch. "Yeah?" He leaned forward again, practically bouncing on one heel. "Yeah? What?"

"Well," the guy continued, "Again, there aren't many living relatives of Garthan Saal, but... I can look up their contact information in the Nova database. Or anyone you're interested in, provided their information is catalogued."

"No, that's... " Peter paused, biting his lip for a second. "... Actually, yeah. That'd... Can you do that? Cuz that'd be great."

"Absolutely." The guy beamed, clearly relieved that Peter took what was probably the 'I'll do anything to get this freak to leave me alone sooner' bait. "Whose records can I access for you tonight?"

Peter's jaw twitched, his fingers curling nervously against the cold surface of the desk as he let himself think.

"Mine."


	5. Chapter 5

Peter didn't think he'd be sneaking out in the same exact way he did a month earlier, but in his defense, if he'd bothered to plan it out, he would've come up with something a little more creative. Like... faking his own death. Or actually setting himself on fire. Y'know, dealer's choice. But if he could get himself to put together a scheme like that, he probably wouldn't have been desperate enough to sneak out in the first place. Or...  _at all_. But at least last time, he was planning on coming back. Not that he was running away for good this time. He just... didn't really have any idea when he'd be able to make a comeback.

Basically every piece of clothing he owned (which seemed like a pretty sad amount, once he had it all stuffed into one knapsack) was packed up and ready to go, so at this point he was trying to figure out what else he actually needed.It was pretty easy to horde the non-necessities when he had a whole freaking spaceship to store his crap in, but currently he was facing some seriously disappointing realities about how his entire stereo system probably wasn't coming along for the ride.

Groaning, he eased down onto his bunk, closing his eyes for a sec as he leaned back. It took him a minute to get settled, and as soon as he did, he had to under his stomach and yank his shirt back down. Luckily, his body hadn't screwed him over with any massive changes yet, but he was definitely starting to look... puffy. His stomach had this really slight curve to it, and his chest was starting to get all....  _doughy._  It was freaking him out a lot. Something he always figured he would have control over was his body, and whatever he decided to do with it, but now? Now he didn't even feel at home in his own skin. How was he supposed to explain that to anybody?

Like, he'd totally be willing to tell people he was just getting fat if that weren't literally impossible. He was  _way_ too rugged to ever let himself get out of shape—who would even buy that?

So, knowing he wasn't gonna pull the wool over anybody's eyes, he figured he had to leave. It was just the best option. He could make it on his own, no sweat. Although he honestly might have a nervous breakdown over leaving the Milano with the interspecies Brady Bunch over here. Shaking his head, he started shoving his extra boots, spats, pants, and Rocket's PADD (He probably wouldn't miss it) into his knapsack. Then, after hesitating for a second, Peter grabbed his headphones and gingerly pulled them off his neck, wrapping them with painstaking care around the tapedeck before dropping them in the bag.

He had his tapes, his clothes, some loot, and all the units he was willing to have on him at one time. That was everything, right? Throat closing up a little, Peter clambered to his feet, hand opening and closing as he squeezed the strap on his bag, wondering how he was supposed to just...  _leave._

Shaking his head, he turned around slowly, then dropped everything when he heard footsteps. Kind of literally.

"Shiiiiiit. Shit, shit..." Frantically, Peter knelt down and shoved everything back in the bag, pausing to make sure the tapedeck wasn't dented or anything before tucking it inside with a little more care. Swallowing, he glanced up, trying to figure out who would be the absolute worst option when it came to somebody catching him. Because, chances were, that's exactly who it was gonna be.

"Am Groo?"

"Oh my God." Peter wheezed, getting back on his feet.

"I am Groo?" Groot wandered through the doorway, then gave Peter a weirdly judgemental look that made him positive the little guy was asking, "What are you doing?"

"Uh.... Heeeeeey there!" Peter grinned, even if he was pretty sure it just looked like he was trying not to hurl. "What're you... What're you doin' up?"

Groot didn't even dignify that with a reponse, just stuck out his lower... bark... lip like he was pouting.

Peter winced, scooting back so he could lean against the wall. "Okay. Yeah, I'm not even sure if you sleep anyway. Sorry."

"Am Groo." Groot shrugged his tiny shoulders in a forgiving sort of way, trotting forward and reaching out to pat Peter's leg.

"Um... Thanks?" Peter grinned again, and this time, it felt a little less fake. "I think."

There was a pretty long silence, with Groot just touching his knee, and Peter just sitting there, opening and closing his mouth while he tried to think of something to say that would totally explain what he wanted to do. Maybemake it seem smart, or like the obvious solution, but... it was pretty hard to come up with something like that when he didn't even feel sure of it himself.

"Hey," he whispered, glancing around for a second, like he was about to give a little kid some awesomesecret. "Can I tell you something?"

Groot's eyes got big and he nodded, mouth thinned like he was holding his breath in anticipation.

"I'm gonna... " Peter dropped his gaze to the floor as he tried to work out what the hell he was trying to say. "I'm gonna leave for a little bit."

He winced when Groot opened his little mouth and let out  _literally_ the most heartbreaking noise in the galaxy. "Ahm  _Groo?"_

"Not, like, forever! I'd never do that to you! A-Any of you." Peter held up his hands like he was at gun point, instead of... about to make a tree baby start crying. "I just gotta leave till I can... I need to... You know! Get some stuff sorted out."

Groot stared him down, and Peter probably had about ten heart attacks in a row waiting to see whether the little guy would start shrieking loud enough to wake up the whole ship. But he didn't—Peter kinda  _knew_  he should've given Groot more credit than that—and instead, he just stared up at Peter like he was thinking super hard, but still with that sort of...

Well, whether or not Groot was in bite-sized mode or not, sometimes he got this look on his face that made Peter think maybe he was secretly some sorta wise, ancient being who knew more about everything than all of the rest of the crew combined.

Heh. Yeah right.

Still, he was starting to look like a leafy Eeyore, so Peter crouched back down, patting Groot's branch-hair and smiling tiredly. "You're not gonna tell anybody, right? I kinda need them to  _not_ come after me. " Groot started to answer and Peter shushed him right off the bat. "I know. I  _know_ what you're gonna say. They're never gonna survive without me. Trust me, I get that. But—Hey!" Peter gave Groot's twiggy shoulders a squeeze. "At least they're gonna have you takin' care of 'em." That's almost as good. Kind of.

Groot tilted his head, giving Peter this teensy side-smile. Hey—He'd take it. "Am Groo."

Peter beamed, straightening up and reaching into one of the outer pockets on his bag. "Thanks, bud." He pulled the formerly blank tape out and turned it over in his hand, staring at it miserably. Yeah, he definitely didn't want to waste this baby on something like this. Oh, well. Life kinda sucked sometimes, and Peter was living the worst sucking streak he'd had in a while.

Ignoring the watery feeling in his eyes, he reached his arm out, holding the tape towards Groot before dropping it carefully into his hands. He couldn't help thinking it was pretty hard to make this whole goodbye scene all touching and sad with Groot staring at the crappy old cassette like it was some priceless artifact, but you know what? Peter didn't really mind.

"Give this to Gamora when somebody actually notices I'm gone." He stood up and shrugged. "Which could take a while." He wasn't gonna sugarcoat it; these people were not  the most attentive bunch. It took Drax no less than two weeks to figure out that the spitball incidents were  _somehow_  connected to Peter.

He arched his back a little, trying to shake off the awkward feeling in the air. "Just.... don't let anybody do anything  _too_ bad, okay?" He puffed out his chest a little, gripping his bag tight. This was gonna sound so badass, he almost wished somebody was recording it. "Remember, it's a big Galaxy. And it needs you."

Groot stared for a second, then burst into shrill giggles.

"Okay!" Peter hissed, motioning for Groot to quiet down. "All right! I get it! Shitty exit line. Sorry." Waving the moss-covered brat off, Peter turned and stomped down the hall, climbing slowly down the escape hatch and wishing, for the millionth time, that he felt like he was doing the right thing.

After squeezing through the outermost part of the hull, he crammed himself into the tiny escape pod, legs pressed against his stomach and chest as he made sure to disable the alarm before disengaging.

Gritting his jaw, he stared at his watery-eyed reflection as the ship started to shrink in the distance, quietly grumbling, "You assholes better not scratch the paint job."

 

**THREE MONTHS LATER**

 

Peter groaned, turning over and smacking his hand listlessly on the table before he managed to hit the alarm clock. Sure, he basically passed out from joy when he found the thing—an authentic, 1980s radio clock from Earth (At least, that's what the guy told him.)—and went through three separate power adapters trying to get it to work in his shitty new place, but now he was seriously questioning if it was worth it. He wasn't even sure why he bothered setting it anymore. There wasn't any reason he had to get up, but he guessed the thought of wasting the whole day in bed was just too damn depressing.

Still. That didn't really stop him from lying under the covers and staring up at the ceiling for about ten minutes before he actually rolled off the mattress. Literally.  _Rolled._ Because his gut had basically turned into a semi-circle over the past couple of months. He sat there for a minute, just glaring down at his body. It didn't help that he felt like a freaking sausage, stuffed a little too tightly into his one stretchy shirt, and that, along with how he was constantly sweaty, winded, and... Ugh.  _Leaky._ Well, it actually made him kind of glad about one thing: nobody who mattered was ever gonna see him like this.

He'd been holed up in this cheap, new age, one-room apartment where everything folded out of the wall since he figured out crashing in random public buildings gets kinda old after the... first time. Sure, he knew he was gonna want some privacy eventually, but he'd been kind of hesitant to spend real money because of something he didn't even want to admit was happening. But hey, no point in sulking about it now. He'd signed a freaking  _lease._ As in, put his real name on a binding, legal document. He was stuck here for however long it took for this melon to drop.

Rubbing at his face for a minute, he finally swung himself forward, shifting back and forth a few times before he actually managed to lift himself up. And then, because he was so great at life, apparently, he immediately bumped the alarm clock onto the floor with his stomach.

"Crap!" Grunting, he let out a puff of breath and did the world's most disturbing squat, grabbing at the clock real fast and trying to turn that momentum into not-getting-stuck-crouched-on-the-floor-again fuel. It worked, barely, but he had to spend a second or two panting and thinking about how he was gonna have to stop taking risks like that. Bending over and then getting  _back up_? Who was he kidding? For him, that had turned into a pipe dream.

He set the clock on the night stand, scratching at the raw skin under his shirt. His stomach was driving him crazy. Not the part with the actual...  _problem_  ramming its feet into his kidneys. The food... part. The... part for food. He didn't really feel like eating, even though he'd normally be starving first thing in the morning. Athough, he kinda knew he should force himself, for his health, or whatever. But since choking something down would require a little more motivation, Peter was gonna save that particular activity for later. Instead, he padded over to the window, wincing at the cold feel of the tile.. All he had to do was press a button to make the shades fly open, and press it again to make the actual glass slide up, but that honestly creeped him out. In fact, crap that was too futuristic and Jetsons-ish was kind of the reason he'd always preferred ships. There wasn't enough new age crap built into them (Well, not the ones he'd bummed around in) to give him that vague, almost impossible to get rid of "culture shock" feeling.

But you know what? This morning he was gonna try to pull his head out of his ass and be a little less negative. Sure, he was dying of boredom. And, yeah, the only people he sort of considered friends had ditched him even though he  _super obviously_  hinted that they should have at least  _tried_  to find him. But again. Positive. He was trying not to be a cynical asshole.

Gritting his jaw, he folded his arms on the sill and laid his head down sideways. He didn't want to look out and see the same creepily white buildings and fashion trends out of Dr. Suess's wettest dreams. He'd already seen that view about a million times anyway, and believe it or not, it got old. Actually, you know what? Fuck being positive! This was bullshit.  He couldn't even last ten seconds trying to like this crap. Seriously—not even flicking random, tiny objects out the window and hitting people with them was enough to cheer him up. Not that he hadn't tried that. A lot. And even though he totally didn't regret getting away from it all. He had to, otherwise he never would've stuck it out this long. He just hadn't figured living the single, suburban life would make him want to puke this much.

On the vaguely bright side, he knew he wouldn't have to stay here much longer. Like, at all. But Peter didn't want to dwell on that. He didn't even like looking at himself, or touching his stomach or chest when he showered. Even though this whole shit fest was the reason he was out here alone in the first place, if he thought about it for too long—or even glanced in the mirror under the neckline—he knew it was pushing him that much closer towards a melt down. He was supposed to be  _Star-Lord._ Former Ravager, current hero of the entire star system. The guy who had women all over the galaxy falling at his feet after his every suave, heroic-but-still-kinda-rougish move. Not some... bloated, lumpy She-Ra knock off.

Groaning, he shifted and turned his head, wincing when he heard this... Oh. Wait, seriously? Was he.... imagining that? Frowning, he lifted his head, squinting dumbly. Ope. No. That was... That was a real baby. Screaming its head off, right next door. He winced, fumbling to close the window before it started to get to him too much, or something even worse happened, like—

"Fuuuuuck." Peter hissed, wrapping an arm over his chest and wincing pathetically. Too late—he'd already soaked through his shirt like some sort of super disgusting squirt gun. Gagging, he took a deep breath, reeled in his urge to puke, then grabbed the hem of his shirt, yanking it over his head. Grimacing, he mopped miserably at his swollen former-pecs, then dumped the shirt on the floor and nudged it under the bed with his foot where it could rot with all the others.

He probably should've been used to stuff that like that by now, but nope. This whole disaster just kept getting weirder and grosser by the day. Almost made him regret taking Rocket's PADD. With all that bounty hunter crap the fleabag had installed on it, the crew would've found Peter in a day. Frowning, he cupped the side of his stomach, which was covered with angry, red marks and currently had  _something_  pressing against the skin from the inside, like a parasite trying to chew its way out. Plus his chest was still dribbling a little, sitting heavy on top of his stomach—Okay, no. He changed his mind. It was totally worth a slow death by boredom as long as nobody saw him like this.

Still, he didn't want to go completely insane. Maybe there was something he could do. Like... take a walk, because the idea of doing anything that was actually fun while he was stuck like this sounded horrible. So... walk. He'd take a walk. Well. Now it'd be more of a waddle, but he was trying not to bust an artery with how much he hated all of this, so he was gonna refrain from using that word. Instead, he just stomped into the corner of the apartment he was using as a bedroom, yanked a tank top out of the drawer in the wall, then did a three minute interpretive dance called "How the hell do I get this thing on my body?" And, once that was out of the way, he pulled his coat—the one that looked and acted like a circus tent, and was basically the only thing that worked to hide the bulge on his middle—off the rack and zipped it clumsily.

Finally, when all that was over, he let himself just glance in the mirror.

He started out looking at his face first. For the most part, it was pretty much the same. Except his beard was long gone, and his cheeks were a little puffier than he remembered, and he thought his chin seemed a little less sculpted. His eyes were the worst part, though. You could tell he hadn't slept right in weeks, 'cause the skin underneath them was this sickly gray-purple that had never been there before. Or maybe, they hadn't been there for a long time. He looked like that constantly his first few weeks on board Yondu's ship, but he hadn't since then. A little defiantly, he screwed his eyes shut and rubbed at one, then sighed and dropped his fist, taking in the rest of his reflection. The coat covered him right down to his knees, was about three sizes too big, and definitely made for a whole different species. It fit him in all the wrong places, and even though it pushed out a little like Peter was smuggling something shady underneath it, at least it didn't hug his stomach. ...Actually, he could feel it getting tighter in that spot, but again, he wasn't gonna think real hard about that.

After watching himself for long enough that he felt like the bed-headed creep in the mirror wasn't really him, Peter got that sort of sick, twisted urge to actually look underneath the coat. And you know what? He was so freaking bored, he was starting to think giving himself a mental breakdown might be the most interesting thing he could do right now. So he grabbed the zipper and slowly tugged it down, grimacing and pulling the sides of the coat apart like he was un-peeling a gross, pregnant banana.

And.... yep. There it was. He almost wanted to mentally crop his head out of the picture, to make the whole thing less bizarre. He just.... didn't want to describe himself. Or acknowledge the fact that his hips were twice as fat, or the fact that he had  _boobs,_ all thanks to the fleshy basketball permanently strapped to his middle. Somehow, that stayed the most disturbing part of the fun house mirror his body had turned into— _Seriously!_ His belly, with the wriggling, living,  _moving_ alien spawn freaked him out more than the tits. He felt like that was really saying something.

He just... wasn't sure if he wanted to think about  _what._

Groaning, he ducked forward and managed to zip the coat back up after two or three failed attempts, then headed for the door. He was too paranoid to use anything but the stairs, thanks to a lot of recent nightmares about having an Omen baby in a really unfortunate location. By the time he made it to the ground level, his feet were already aching, and everything hurt a tiny bit, and he sort of wanted to lie down on the pavement and pass out forever. But these days, that wasn't weird for him, so it was a little easier to just keep forcing his train wreck of a meat suit to walk until he couldn't think about anything other than how tired and miserable he was just moving—instead of, like, how miserable he was about life in general.

In fact, it might've worked a little too well. He may or may not have been seeing his entire life flash before his eyes during that last stint towards the NOVA courtyard. Chest heaving, he pawed at his face. The whole place was a lot more crowded than usual, and he wondered for a second if there was something cool going on before reminding himself that literally nothing on Xandar was anything but balls-numbingly dull. After watching everybody mill around for a second, he swallowed and turned around the minute he caught his breath. He was just gonna... leave. Not sure where he'd actually go, but he'd figure it out. That was how he'd been living for a pretty long time at this point, and it had worked out okay. At the very least, he wasn't dead yet.

" _Peter?"_

Peter froze, throat closing up as he slowly,  _painfully_  turned his head.

Okay. Maybe he spoke too soon.


	6. Chapter 6

Peter couldn't help thinking that this was not the first time he ran into a girl after ditching her for months on end. And, also, absolutely not the first time a girl he'd skipped out on wanted to slice his head off.

It was just—

He was pretty sure Gamora was actually gonna  _do it._

"Where have you  _been?_ " Somehow, she'd spotted him from all the way across the courtyard, which made Peter feel totally stupid since he hadn't even seen her coming. Seriously, how did she get under his radar? She was basically a chatruese Where's Waldo!

"I, uh—" Peter stumbled back, almost tripping over a few people before a path started to clear around them. "Where've I been? Well... here, Actually."

"What  _idiotic_  thing came over you and convinced you to—to—" Her face was turning an even darker green, which made Peter realize—and yeah, he knew it was bad timing, but he couldn't turn it off sometimes—he'd never made her blush that hard  _without_  sending her into a murderous rage. "— _abandon_  us!"

He swallowed, finally stopping in his tracks and staring down into those dark eyes. This was the point where he figured he was supposed to come up with his  _coup de grace_  of excuses. Some story that was really clever and charming that would win Gamora over and make her immediately trust him again. Luckily, he was an expert at that kind of crap.

"I just thought... " He rubbed the back of his neck, turning his head a little before grinning shyly. "I mean... I didn't know what to think of...  _us_ ." He shook his head, then paused to look off into the distance all thoughtfully. "I'd never felt like that before. I was scared of...  _my feelings_ . How strong they were, for you, and—"

She cracked him right in the jaw.

_Hard._

Seriously! He forgot until that exact moment how much Gamora's fists felt like cinderblocks.

He squeaked, doubling over and clutching at his face. "J-Jesus  _Christ_ ..."

"You're an idiot, Quill." She sounded tired and majorly pissed off, but even though she was trying to be all cold by calling him "Quill" again, Peter could tell he'd already gotten under her skin.

"Heh." He pawed weakly at the lump sprouting up on his face, swallowing a glob of what tasted like... Okay, yeah. It was probably blood. "You missed me."

Gamora rolled her eyes and made a disgusted noise, but she didn't hit him again, so Peter knew that totally meant she forgave him.

"Why did you leave?" she demanded, jerking her arms up so suddenly it made Peter flinch. Not wanting to look back at her yet, he scanned the courtyard instead, then spotted Drax and Groot—back to full size, and lugging Rocket around on his shoulder—pushing through the crowd towards them. Too bad he was a little too occupied to say hi.

Specifically, he busy pulling a better excuse out of his ass. Mostly so he could keep said reunion from turning into a murder-fest. "It's—! Y'know! My reasons were... complicated. Complicated, personal stuff..."

"Peter, you live with four other...." She paused, then shook her head. "Beings." Peter wanted to grin at all the overly PC language, but he figured he better at least try to look like he was listening. "After everything we've been through together, keeping secrets from one another is... " She swallowed bitterly, and Peter had to look away again. " _Worrying._ "

"Yeah, but.... " Letting out a quick puff of air, Peter shrugged. "It was just... I mean, it's something I didn't think you guys needed to know about."

"Why?" Now Gamora sounded all bitter and defensive, which was definitely different. Peter was used to her being all cold and poetic, or sarcastic and fed up with everybody else; it wasn't the first time she'd ever gotten this upset, but when it happened before, he'd been clinging to the idea of getting mega rich off the infinity stone. So if she was the same level of pissed about that as she was about Peter having vamoosed, what he did was probably hitting home for her a lot harder than he'd figured. "Why couldn't you tell us?"

"I dunno." Peter felt his fingers twitch anxiously. "Well, privacy, for one thing..."

Drax placed a hand gingerly on Gamora's shoulder, in a fatherly sort of way. Well, if your dad happened to love murdering. Although Drax had been a dad, so, hey! It kinda worked. "If it was privacy you were looking to achieve, you could have simply asked for us to not encroach on whatever subject was troubling you."

"It wasn't that simple!" Peter grimaced at the whiny pitch that jumped into his voice. "You guys would've figured it out. It was... " And still kind of  _is_ ... "It's something that would've been hard to hide."

After he said that, Gamora got a look on her face, and Peter froze. She seemed totally horrified all of a sudden, and it made him wonder if he'd said something terrible instead of another flimsy attempt at keeping stuff hidden.

"Peter," Gamora mumbled. "Your mother... " She worked her jaw a little, obviously trying to work out how to say something hard. "She had... an illness." Peter's face crumpled up when said that, even though he knew it was long past the point where the topic should've been a sore spot. "Are you... ?" Her throat sounded thick as she whispered, "Are you sick? Are you... ill like she was?"

"What?" Peter wheezed, shaking his head frantically. "No! No, I'm not... Uh, I'm not dying. I'm... fine. Ish."

"You sure?" Rocket piped up, leaning against Groot's head lazily. "'Cuz it's soundin' like you lost even more brain power than the last time we talked. And, lemme just clarify, here—" He stood up straighter, holding his tiny, stubby raccoon fingers real close together. "You wasn't doin' all that good in the cognitive department  _before_  we caught up with you."

"Yeah, uh, thanks," Peter droned. "It's always nice to have my life choices mocked by Davy Crockett's hat."

"I am Groot." Groot added, and Peter gave an over the top sigh. Okay, no; he  _wanted_  to act all annoyed when he heard those words, but he kinda missed the big log!

"As far as I am aware, Rocket serves as more of a shoulder accessory than a hat," Drax noted.

Peter rolled his eyes, but admitted to himself that, somehow, he'd also missed having every word that came out of his mouth fly over Drax's head.

"But—if you weren't in a position where you might die, why did you leave us a message like that?" Gamora demanded.

Peter cocked his head. "What? It was just a... motivational speech! To keep you guys on your toes while I was gone!"

Gamora groaned, throwing her hands up in the air. "What does impractical battle posture have to do with you leaving us a false death message?!"

" _Death message?"_ Peter bawked. "Wh-What, like a will? You guys thought I was leaving a  _will?_ "

"Ehh." Rocket flipped his paw dismissively. "Either that, or you were tryin' to get us to blast our brains out usin' only the sound of your voice." He gritted his teeth and shuddered. "Seriously, Quill? Twenty two minutes of that crap? Thought we'd gotten through with the part where we get tortured mercilessly for no fricken reason."

Gamora shrugged, grabbing at her elbow uncomfortably. "You even mentioned that you wished to 'go out banging.'"

Peter jumped, raising his hands up defensively. " _Noooo_ , I said 'go out with a bang.'" He frowned, thought for a second, then decided, "Well, either or, actually."

"Oh." Gamora stared Peter down for a minute, then actually smiled. "I'm....  _glad_  it wasn't meant to be a funerary message." One side of her mouth twitched in amusement. "Although, I did think it suited you. Especially the part where you mumbled about how 'cool' you sounded before you realized you were still being recorded."

"It totally would've been cool if that part got cut off," Peter insisted.

"Oh, ' _totally'_ ." Gamora actualy grinned that time, and Peter suddenly felt exhausted. You know what? If anybody deserved to know, it was these assholes.

"Hey, uh..." He took a deep breath, listening to the muffled sound of people shoving their way around them before speaking up. "You guys should come with me, all right? There's somethin' I gotta tell you."

 

* * *

 

 

Ten minutes later, he had the Galaxy's most obnoxious Motley Crew poking around his apartment, and he was still kind of debating over how he felt about it.

"So this is where you were laying at great depth," Drax murmured, squinting at the pullout counters.

"Laying—?" Peter cringed. "It's 'laying low', dude." He shook his head, grumbling, "I can't believe I missed this crap."

"It is not what I would have expected," Drax admitted. "Though it was against your wishes, we did search for you. The locations we determined you were most likely to flee to were all places with disturbing reputations; the underbellies of various societies."

"Y'know," Rocket piped up, crouching on the window ledge and pausing to snicker rudely at what Peter was pretty sure was a Xandarian fashion statement. "The scummiest places in the whole quadrant. That general idea."

"Real flattering intel, guys," Peter drawled.

Rocket turned around to sneer at him. "You gotta know that's just beggin' for me to say that we work with what you give us, right?"

"Well, Maybe—" Peter waved his arm defensively. "Maybe I figured you were gonna look for me there, which is why I came here!" He crossed his arms, sweating so hard under the coat his skin was itching.

"Nah." Rocket snorted. "We both know you're not that smart."

Peter opened his mouth, fumbling for some appropriately assholish comment that'd put Rocket in his place, but the fact that he knew the fleabag was right made that a little difficult.

"Well?" Gamora looked really uncomfortable sitting on the foldout bed, like she was scared it was going to pull a cookie monster and flip her into its gaping maw. "What is your announcement? I assume it has something to do with you being gone." She narrowed her eyes. "For  _two months_ ."

Peter grimaced; she definitely didn't mind verbally grinding the knife into his chest, but he knew he didn't have the right to be mad. "Yeah, actually. It did. And... does."

Gamora cocked her... Well, Peter wasn't gonna call it an eyebrow. Maybe just her... brow area.

"I, uh.... " He licked his lips, glancing around at everybody. Shit, was he just supposed to... Should he just spit it out? It wasn't like he was gonna go back on his word and tell everybody to leave, then lock the door to his apartment until the kid stopped incubating. Even if that  _was_  tempting, it also might piss Rocket off enough to blow up part of the building. Plus, Peter didn't think he had the heart to let them down a second time. "This is gonna sound crazy, but..." He raised his arms, then let them flop uselessly at his side. "I'm, uh... " He shrugged. "I'm pregnant."

Honestly, Peter was expecting everybody to start cracking up, like it was a really crappy joke, but they all just looked confused, or maybe a little worried for his mental health.

"Peter," Gamora began slowly. "I'm... not sure how inadequate your... reproductive education was with the Ravagers, but... " She grimaced, then said the next part  _reeeaaally_  slow, like she was talking to a five-year-old. "Men cannot become pregnant."

"Okay, yeah, normally—I get that, I  _totally_  do, believe me, but, uh—" He shrugged again, fumbling with his zipper and gradually yanking it down. He sort of wanted it to be a big, smooth, dramatic reveal, but then the zipper got caught twice and basically ruined it. Dropping the coat at his feet, he glanced down at his gut, then back up at the crew. "Sooo... Yeah."

Okay, now they were  _really_  staring. Peter couldn't blame them, but honestly, it felt pretty good to tell somebody, so he took it a little further, just to, like, convert any nonbelievers. He grabbed the hem of his shirt, rolling it up to show off his stomach. Sure, he got that even this could've been fake—it could've been some bat-shit prank with tons of drawn-on stretch marks and makeup and a big, prosthetic belly—but right on cue, the little parasite shoved his foot against the outer curve of Peter's stomach, making it jut out creepily in one spot.

Gamora moved first. Peter guessed it made a lot of sense; she'd probably seen way worse, and maybe even way  _weirder—_ at least, he was gonna hope so, because otherwise this was about a million times more humiliating. He jerked a tiny, tiny bit when she lowered her hands and cupped the sides of his stomach, staring at it in disbelief. Peter realized he was grinning, admitted that it was weird he was grinning, and kept doing it anyway. Finally, she looked back up at him, jaw still slack for a second before she uttered, "Peter... " She gingerly pulled her hands away as he tugged his shirt back down. "What the  _fuck?"_

"Well," Rocket said after a long pause. "If it was gonna happen to any of the biggest douchebags in the galaxy, it makes sense that it'd be you."

"Thanks." Peter jammed his hands in the pockets of his sweats, then yanked them out immediately after, holding them up in the universal "shut up for a second" gesture. "It's okay, though! I've got it all taken care of."

Drax and Groot glanced at each other before the big guy (the... human shaped one) opened his mouth. "... One does not normally refer to the gestational process and postnatal responsibilities of having a child as being... 'taken care of.'"

"That's... I mean, that's probably  _kinda_  true." Peter pawed at the back of his neck, definitely a little uncomfortable with everyone still gawking at him. "But... I do... I do mean it. Like, I...  _can't_  take care of this kid. I'm totally a peace with that, I just... " He swallowed, throat feeling weirdly dry all of a sudden. "I can't do it. I'm not cut out for it. So... " Taking a deep breath, Peter shut his eyes for a second. "I found somebody who's gonna do it for me."

"I am Groot?" Groot murmured.

"Who?" Gamora echoed. Probably.

"It's, uh... A relative of mine. My cousin." Padding over to the bed, Peter eased down, clasping his hands over what was left of his lap. "I sent him this sort of... letter in a really old fashioned communication format, and I... didn't really explain much, just said it was me and I needed to find a place for the kid to stay. And that I wanted to... keep it in the family." Honestly, Peter barely even remembered talking to Mac when he was a kid living on Earth, but other than his grandparents, he was one of the few people Peter remembered, period. And he was the only person on the list of people he knew who wasn't... Well.  _Gone_ . "He didn't even ask any questions, just said... that he'd do it." It was probably the best thing that had happened to Peter in the past two months, and sure, that wasn't saying much, but for Peter, it made this whole thing just bearable enough to not want to stick his head in the oven.

"That seems... unlikely." Gamora glanced down at Peter's gut again, like she didn't know what to think of it. Honestly, Peter wasn't sure he did, either. "How do you know you can trust him?"

Leaning back, he let out a sigh. "I mean, he's family, for one thing. Plus, we kinda... video-chatted?" He grimaced. "I kept it, uh... above the neck-line." He paused, remembering how he'd panicked with the front cam, then shook his head. "Look, I'll spare you the emotional crap, but... We kind of had a heart to heart." Thinning his lips, he looked at Gamora again. "And... I really think he wanted to help me."

"I do not understand why someone would willingly separate from their child," Drax stated, and he gave Peter a look that made him think Drax might be relieving him of his spine at any moment for saying such a thing. But then his tone got all sad and distant, and Peter's heart stopped pounding so hard. "However... I understand your reasons are your own, and will respect them." He gave Peter a thoughtful look. "In addition, I believe you are correct in assuming you would be dangerously incompetent as an infant's caretaker."

Peter gave a big, fake-ass smile. "Really feelin' the love, bud."

Drax furrowed his brow. "That is an illogical response."

Peter gave the guy a tired look. "And I missed you, too."

"I am Groot." Groot looked at Peter with a similarly bummed out expression, then lumbered forward to give him a bristly pat on the shoulder. "I am Groot!"

"Good to know." He nodded, feeling pretty sure he'd just gotten a repeated, if not a little more tactful version of Drax's comments. "But hey! On the bright side, now that the cat's out of the bag, there's basically no reason I can't just... get back on my ship with you!"

"I don't think that's a good idea." Gamora grimaced at Peter.

"What?" Peter straightened up, squinting at the rest of the crew. "Why not?"

Rocket snorted, hopping down from the window. "We got half the Galaxy tryin' to skin us and turn us into one of a kind fashion accessories, and the you're in somethin' of a delicate condition. I'd say bein' filleted don't go well with havin' a bun in the oven."

"I smell nothing to indicate something is being baked," Drax grumbled.

"Look." Peter turned to Drax. "If it's a euphemism, just assume it's about me being knocked up." And, right on cue, there went the frustrated "toddler who doesn't understand how the world works" face. "... Pregnant, Drax. Pregnant."

"You're not coming, Peter." Gamora crossed her arms stiffly. "It's too risky. We still aren't sure whether we were followed here." She sighed, glancing at the others in a way that made Peter feel like he'd missed out on a whole lot of important stuff. Like.... they all still got each other in that funny, mismatched-but-still-in-it-together-for-the-long-haul way, and Peter had managed to lock himself out of that loop. "In fact, I think we'd better get going."

"What?!" Peter cringed, wobbling awkwardly before he managed to stand up. "No! No, no—come on! I'm the one who ditched you, you don't get to walk out on  _me_ !"

"Yes, we do." Gamora glowered and Peter recoiled a tiny bit. "Because, unlike you, we can promise to be back after a few days, and not a few months."

"Ouch," Peter mumbled.

Gamora watched him for a second, and the look on her face softened. "Take care, Peter."

Before he knew it, everybody was filing out, with only Groot pausing to glance back at him. Peter gawked for a good ten seconds before scrambling forward, doing a really clumsy, awkward, grabby lunge for his coat on the floor as he stomped towards the door, muttering a quick, "Oh,  _hell_  no."

He stepped out of the apartment and zipped himself back into the coat, glancing down the hall to make totally sure that they didn't see him before he stumbled after them. It took a lot of effort to go fast enough to keep them in his line of sight, but far enough behind them so that they didn't see him. Especially since he fighting off the urge to breathe like a dying horse after five minutes; he had to clamp his hands over his mouth just to keep Gamora from hearing him. Peter felt sure it was probably for the sole reason that the universe was fucking with him, but he couldn't help thinking that of  _course_  they had to park in the same lot he had before bailing on them. Hiding behind the wing of the ship next door, Peter waited for the whole crew to get on board before scrambling over to the Milano. She looked as beautiful as ever, minus the glaring ding on her side Peter was gonna strangle Rocket over, but he'd have to do that later.

On the bright side, he was still positive nobody knew about the tiny latch underneath the left rear engines, which was gonna be his ticket back inside. And, hey, even if somebody (probably Rocket) had ripped his way through enough wiring to find the chute, Peter was still gonna scare the shit out of them when he popped up out of nowhere. Which would  _absolutely_  serve them right. Ghosting his fingers over the seam in the underside of the ship's body, he pushed his hand into the little indent and pulled the door open. After grabbing the lowest bar-shaped thing, he (barely) managed to yank himself inside, gripping the ladder and pulling the hatch closed by sticking his foot through the handle. Letting out a relieved puff of air, he hauled himsef up through the shaft into the landing on the living area, then sat there for a second, marveling at how gross and out of shape he was as he panted. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, hoping to catch his breath, then yelping when he slid rapidly back as the ship lurched forward.

Grunting, Peter grabbed at the wall and shakily pulled himself to his feet. Or tried to. There were a few seconds where he was pretty positive he was stuck, but luckily, with enough spastic squirming, he got free. And even though his middle was aching after that stunt, it was all gonna be worth it just to show these assholes that  _nobody_  runs out on Peter Quill. Smirking, he gradually made his way up towards the deck, struggling to keep his steps on the ladder as quiet as possible. He finally got into the cockpit, heart racing and muscles in his middle twinging. Everybody had their backs turned, and Peter was definitely more than ready to make some dumb comment to make all of them crap their collective pants.

He opened his mouth, but all of a sudden, it felt like his brain was turning off.

And, not even a split second later he doubled over as a warm gush of something dribbled down his legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are highly appreciated just fyi


	7. Chapter 7

Peter heard himself make this really humiliating little noise, but it must've been louder than he thought, because by the time he looked up Gamora was jumping to her feet and sprinting over to him. "PETER!"

"Hhh.... Heeeey." Peter swallowed, leaning weakly against the wall. "So... I get that this is bad timing, but..." He took a gross-sounding breath as this nasty pain started to build up in his stomach. "I-I think I'm gonna need to go to a hospital."

"What are you— _What?!"_ Gamora shrilled so loud Peter had to lean away for a second as she dug her fingers into his shoulder and helped him straighten up. "Why are you here?"

"O-Oh, you know." Peter grinned weakly. "Figured you guys owed me a baby shower."

"That was a rhetorical question, Peter." Gamora pawed at his middle, kind of like she could will the kid to stay put or something. "The correct answer was: you are an  _idiot._ "

"A-Are you... Are you even allowed to say that to me right now?" Peter winced again, shoving Gamora's hand away. Well, trying to. Since he was suddenly feeling about as strong as a freaking kitten, it didn't work all that well. "I mean, I'm kind of in  _horrible pain_. Can you cut me some slack for once? Y'know, m-maybe.... take it easy on the guy who's about to drop a freakin' melon?"

"No." Gamora yanked him over to the nearest empty chair, fumbling as she tried get the belt to buckle over his massive gut.

He grunted when she yanked it closed and pulled the straps on extra tight. "Fair enough."

"I'm just lettin' you know," Rocket announced, grabbing at the steering wheel and giving it a rough turn out of nowhere, "you picked the worst possible time for playin' stowaway. We got a rogue NOVA officer tailin' us who's been stickin' his greasy shnoz into our business for the past three weeks. We stay still long enough—"

"H-He's gonna slap some cuffs on you and feed you to the Sarlacc?" Peter wheezed and tried to double over, but the weight of his stomach, plus the bondage-y state of his seatbelt, made that kind of difficult.

"Behold!" Drax gestured to the main console, which happened to be screeching at them about an imminent impact from behind. "Titus is pursuing us and has locked onto our location. If he does not descrease his velocity, both our ships will suffer catastrophic damage."

"I am Groot!" Peter turned to watch Groot lean forward anxiously.

"Okay, so this guy's a lunatic." He squirmed a little, craning his neck backwards like he could see through the rear end of the ship to confirm that.

"So, not the sorta crowd you happen to be unfamiliar with, huh, Quill?" Rocket growled, slamming down on the accelerator. "Maybe the whole reason he found us was him smellin' the concentrated  _batshit_  comin' offa you!"

"Y-You said he's a dirty cop, right?" Gritting his teeth together, Peter hunched forward and whined as another spasm tore through him. "W-Why don't we just do a 180? T-Take him back to Xandar? Bet... Bet they'd be happy to lock him up." With proof, but hey; trying to smear the Galaxy's crappiest Justice League onto the nearest asteroid had to prove he was bad news, right?

"That would be  _wonderful —_ " Gamora started fiddling with the console, upping the thruster power as Rocket failed to avoid making the Milano jerk down with a really nasty  _crunching_  sound. "If we could get there before he tears our ship in half!"

"It's still  _my...._ Hhhrnn.... " Peter whimpered, stretching his legs out in a shitty attempt at easing some of the pain. " _Mmmmyyyyy_  ship!"

Rocket yanked the whole steering wheel towards him, sending the Milano into a (hypocritically!) batshit spiral. "NOT A GOOD TIME."

Peter clenched his jaw as tight as he could, eyes screwing shut as he struggled to swallow a nice big glob of pre-barf. Seriously; he would've loved to ralph all over the floor and save himself some grief, but he was pretty sure it was just gonna splatter right back into his face instead.

By the time they finally straightened out, he was panting, hands clenching the armrests as his stomach throbbed. "Ooohhkay, this hurts. This actually hurts a lot."

The universe gave an answer to that in the form of some nails-on-a-chalkboard-ish screeching sounds as the "Titan" guy's ship scraped against the Milano's hull. Peter watched Rocket's tail inflate to twice its size before the furball turned his head to screech at Peter. "Well, what the HELL did you expect? Maybe next time,  _don't get knocked up before sneakin' onto an IMPLODIN' SHIP!"_

Peter gawked at that, seriously starting to panic. Labor pains? That was... whatever. He knew it was gonna happen eventually. Some psycho ex-cop was trying to kill them? That stuff happened all the time! But this was Peter's ship! His baby!

Uh. Well. His...  _first_  baby.

Peter smashed his buckle open, struggling to move forward as Rocket tilted the whole ship up, thrusters going way over what should've been their limit. He had to yank himself up, inch by inch, using the armrest of everyone's seats as handholds. Moving slowly,  _painfully—_ seriously, how did he let himself get this  _fat?!—_ Peter kept it up until he could grab at the steering lever, pulling it out of Rocket's grip, slowing down and twirling the ship into a complete 180.

He paused for a second, panting until he managed to get out his inspirational speech of the day. "Don't worry, dickheads. I got this."

Rocket only gave him a slightly pissed, somewhat surrendering look before taking his hand off the controls. Peter smashed his own hand onto them, ramming the thurster speed up as high as it'd go. Rocket, who thankfully got the hint, scrambled under the console and started to tear through the wiring and panels, doing anything and everything that might make the Milano go faster. Scanning the stars, Peter kept a lookout for Tighty-Whitey's ship. There was no way they lost him that fast and—Ope. No. He was right there. The ship was pretty easy to spot once it came barreling towards the nose of the Milano, but Peter reacted in time, jerking them out of the way at the last second, all while frantically looking for any sign of Xandar. They hadn't gotten all that far away from it—probably since he just spent a good thirty seconds backtracking—so Peter spotted that beautiful blue-and-gold orb in no time.

"He still on our tail?" Rocket growled.

There was a loud moan, then. "I... Hbbbllurr.... a-am...  _Grr.... oooot!"_

Huh. Turned out he was gonna be scrubbing puke off the floor anyway. Funny how that worked.

Shaking his head, Peter pulled up the side camera display. "Okay, this guy's  _definitely_  not with the fuzz. No way those thrusters are regulation." Obviously, since he had Rocket slamming highly illegal overclocking boosters into place next to his feet, he was pretty familiar with the subject.

"This is shameful!" Glancing back, Peter watched Drax fumble with his booster seat straps. "A warrior does not flee. When faced with a cowardly, prideless enemy, one must  _fight_!"

"Yeah?" Peter's voice jumped up an octave when the Milano took a bunch of blaster hits strong enough to shake the cabin. "Well, pretty sure a  _warrior_  also knows when to retreat! Y'know—like when one of the warrior's  _buddies_  is about to explode all over the windshield unless he gets to a hospital, STAT!"

Drax made a bitter little noise, but thanks to whatever dear, sweet higher power that didn't hate Peter as much as it could, he didn't push it.

"I AM GROOT!" Peter looked over and saw Groot point towards one of the scanners just in time to feel the whole ship jerk painfully to one side.

"That was a direct hit to the left engine!" Gamora unbuckled herself and darted over to the console. "One of our boosters is failing."

"Ohhhh no." Peter swallowed, then winced as he heard this sad, dying robot noise coming from the engine room. "Ohhhh no, no, no  _no—_ that's a BAD sound, that is  _not_  a happy sound! Rocket—"

"KINDA BUSY, QUILL!" Peter winced when he got a tiny, surprisingly painful shin-kick for his concern. With slug-like tread, he awkwardly turned the ship around. Kinda reminded him of how he was moving these days, but with Bad Cop zooming towards them at breakneck speed, he found it a little hard to get a kick out of that.

Sweat beading on his forehead, Peter glanced around. At Gamora, out towards Xandar, back at his tapedeck—if he was gonna have to scrape that thing off the surface of NOVA HQ a second time, he was gonna be  _seriously_ pissed—and then he opened his mouth.

"... I got an idea."

"What?" Gamora looked at him like he was crazy, so he knew, just from experience, that meant it was a good one.

"Everybody buckle in!" he ordered, bending and grabbing Rocket by the scruff of his little jumpsuit before shoving him into his seat despite the angry, rabid hissing. Peter slid into the driver's chair, slowly angling the ship so the upper half was facing towards Tyrone. Holding his breath, he waited till he felt sure everybody (or, mostly everybody, he wasn't  _that_  picky) was strapped in before disabling the Milano's axis control at the same time he sent them flying towards the asshole's ship.

Which meant they started to spin.

Like,  _really_  spin.

As in, Rocket's corkscrew manuever from earlier  _wished_  it could've been half as spinny as Peter's spinning. Which sounded a hell of a lot less cool than Peter would've liked, but that totally didn't matter because it  _worked_ . Titus slammed on the brakes, but the Milano, coming towards him like the galaxy's most pissed off whirly-gig, clipped him by the left wing so brutally it sent him hurtling into the stratosphere. Peter re-engaged the axis and slowed the Milano, panting as he watched with only  _slightly_  blurry vision while Titus's ship sped towards the surface, obviously failing to pull out of its nasty plunge.

Finally, Peter righted the ship all the way, Rocket and Drax falling off the ceiling as they slowed to a stop. "Well. That was fun!"

He winced as Rocket barfed loudly in response to that—Seriously? Was this gonna become a thing?—then glanced back towards Xandar. "Uh. Fingers crossed that doesn't land on anything important."

"Peter... " Gamora, panting raggedly, grabbed onto his shoulder again. "I.... "

Peter beamed despite the  _horrible pain_  his body couldn't stop reminding him he was in. "Hey, don't mention it. You're  _welcome."_

She gave him the tiredest look she could muster. "No, Peter." He watched as her shoulders slumped. "I was going to say, I think we woud  _all_  like to go to the hospital."

  


* * *

 

 

When they got there, they checked Rocket for a concussion, patched up the scrape on Gamora's forehead, and, after making sure he wasn't part of some messed up, not-that-funny prank, they told Peter what he already kind of figured—that this  _was_  the "l" word.

And after that, the doctor told him to walk.

Honestly, he tuned a lot of of the resulting lecture out. Mostly because he wasn't a fan of hearing super detailed run-downs about junk he didn't even  _have_  a year ago, especially when they were taking place in front of the only people he hung out with on a regular basis. But he got the gist; he wasn't as close to getting this over with as he wanted to be, but walking was supposed to help.

And hey, if by "help", they meant "turn up the pain dial until it felt like somebody was ripping his spine out", they were right. It was hurting so bad he almost didn't care that they stuck him one of those paper hospital gowns, or that he had to hang onto Groot or Drax just so he could waddle down the hall without falling over. Except, it was  _literally_  the worst thing ever, so, yes, Peter totally did care—he just didn't have it in him to do jack shit about the situation.

By the time he started to get really worn out, he was feeling like he was in a really long, hazy, pain-filled dream. He didn't really remember it happening, but after they brought him back to his room and put him on his side, they stuck him with the most diabolical, mad-scientist looking shot he'd ever seen in his life, and the pain got....  _better_. It didn't go away, but it got better, and suddenly Peter felt like he could think again.

"W-Wait, so... " He swallowed, glancing at Gamora nervously. "Did they ever catch that guy or... ?"

Gamora's look basically said "I literally can't believe you're worrying about that right now", but hey, Peter was just...  _tender-hearted_  and all that crap. "Yes, Peter. He's in custody." She frowned, pushing her hair off her face. "You... You  _do_  realize you're about to give birth, right?"

"No, Gamora," he deadpanned. "Totally slipped my mind."

Drax furrowed his brow. "Did you assume the immense pain was a symptom of an unrelated health problem?"

"I am Groot." Groot clasped his hands together and gave Peter worried puppy-dog eyes.

Peter just squinted. "Why'd they let you guys in here again?"

Rocket leaned against Groot's head, tapping his foot on the big guy's shoulder. "Somebody's gotta keep an eye on you. Ya literally just gave half of us brain damage, and last time I was  _informed_ , we was sposed to be on the same team."

Peter leaned back. "You are  _such_  a whiner." Then the nurse pricked him with the IV and he squeaked. "Ow!"

He watched as she stood up and gave the criminal Cosby Kids a nervous look. "Uh—Mister... ? Mister Quill, we  _can_  have them leave if you'd be more comfortable."

"Nah." Peter shrugged, settling back in. "If I have to be scarred for life, I'm gonna make 'em watch. That's what friends do, right?" He slung his arm over the metal, bed-guard thing, grinning. "Besides,  _somebody's_  gotta hold my hand, right?" He felt his eyebrows go up as a big, blue somebody did just that. "Oh. Uh. Thanks, Drax."

Drax nodded and gave Peter's hand a surprisingly gentle squeeze.

After that, they just kinda sat there for a while, Drax slumped in the chair next to the bed, still gripping Peter's hand, Gamora standing next to the IV thingy, rubbing Peter's head idly (and hey, while it'd be way cooler if that part of the scene were a little more  _private_ , Peter wasn't gonna lie and say it didn't feel good) while Groot sat on the floor with Rocket nodding off in his lap. For a while, Peter wanted to try and sleep, but the pain was coming back, along with this extra terrible feeling, and really, it just made him want this to be over with worse than ever.

Suddenly, he sat up, groaning and clenching both hands. After waiting for the pain to start to ebb in a complete, thoughtless haze, he came to a little and managed to catch his breath. By the time he did that, the nurse was back, along with the doctor. At this point, Peter was so fucking tired he must've barely had any shame left, because all he felt was a prick of embarrassment when they shoved his feet into stirrups and told him to start pushing. He nodded, sweat dribbling off his forehead as he tensed up, every muscle in his middle clenching as hard as possible, squeezing tight onto the covers and Drax's hand—

"SHIT!" Peter yelped, yanking his arm away from Drax. "Whh... WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

The pain was fading just enough for him to actually hear himself think again, and he gawked at Drax for a second before staring dumbly at his grossly bruised hand.

"I..." Drax shrunk, looking like a guilty kid when everyone turned to stare at him. "M-My apologies. I assumed the purpose of this exercise was for both individuals to squeeze."

Peter managed a crazy laugh—and hey, for once, he'd agree with Gamora; he actually  _did_ feel like he had a few screws loose—and then doubled over again. The ache kept getting worse and worse, till all Peter could think was basically "it hurts" and "holy shit, it hurts so bad" and also a string of really impressive swearwords, some of which he was amazed he even remembered. It had to be over with soon. Seriously, it had to, because if it wasn't, Peter was  _literally_  going to die. Screw it—his body wasn't supposed to handle any of this, and pushing this kid out was gonna split him in half. As he was thinking this, he heard the word "head" clearly enunciated, and suddenly felt like he was gonna barf on top of everything else.

Instead, he doubled over so far it felt like his chin was touching his stomach as he clenched every single muscle in his body. He started pulling everything tighter and tighter into himself until—and, no, he wasn't really  _proud_ so much as completely grossed out and relieved at the same time—he felt something  _drop out of him_.

Falling back, Peter slid his black and blue hand onto his chest, staring as the doctor lifted up this...

Thing.

Well, baby. He guessed.

Shit, did that really... ?

Did that seriously come out of him?

He watched, head throbbing, as the nurses started to clean it off, and even though he knew people were talking—probably to him—all he could hear was that freaky, high-pitched shrieking. They read off some numbers. Length, weight... Stuff he guessed he was supposed to care about, but the only thing that really got through was that it was a he, and that  _he_ was healthy. That Peter didn't kill him by being a guy who got pregnant, or by not doing any of the shit he knew people were supposed to do when they were pregnant. Maybe he should have been happy he  _wasn't_  pregnant anymore, but mostly he was just tired. And maybe a little empty.

Peter groaned, turning over on the bed despite how every inch of him was still hurting. He closed his eyes and tried not to think, deciding he just needed to sleep. For a minute, maybe.

Or for the rest of his life.


	8. Chapter 8

It was three days before they finally let Peter leave. Not that he was counting or anything. It wasn't like he was stuck in a hospital bed on the most politically correct planet in the system with something really nerve-wracking hanging over his head. Oh,  _wait_ . But hey, at least it was sort of bearable. Even if everything about staying sucked, and Peter couldn't sleep—mostly since he'd wake up feeling like somebody parked the Milano on his face—he wasn't suffering on his own. The crew stuck with him the whole time. Like, literally the whole time. As in, fuck visiting hours, you could not get  _rid_  of these people.

It was kinda funny, actually, since he was pretty sure visitors who  _weren't_  convicted murderers and pissed off woodland scenery didn't get this kind of special treatment. But frankly, Peter wasn't gonna complain. It helped take some of the focus off him. Since, for whatever reason, the hospital staff kept trying to get him to do stuff with the kid. Like... feed it, and hold it...

 _Him_ . Okay, it was a him. And Peter wasn't trying to be a dick about it or anything, it just... freaked him out. He kept telling everybody who worked there that he wasn't keeping it— _him—_ but they either seemed to think he was gonna change his mind, or they didn't care. They even pressured him to come up a name before anybody brought up a release date, so Peter just blurted out the first thing that came to mind, and almost forgot it right after. If that didn't prove he wasn't cut out for this, he didn't know what did.

Peter felt sort of bad in a vague, weirded out way that he didn't want to touch the kid any more than he absolutely had to, but, again, this time, somebody actually had his back. It turned out Drax still had some actual, decent fathering skills, and Gamora, despite being just as freaked out by the kid as Peter was at first, seemed to get over her baby-phobia after a while. For those three days, they basically did all the stuff Peter couldn't or wouldn't do.

Which was...  _everything_ , honestly.

When they finally,  _finally_  let him out of the hospital, Peter didn't even carry the kid. Just let Drax lug it around in a baby holder somebody had gotten them. He lead the way down the hall, through the lobby, an straight to the Milano, walking so fast he was practically sprinting even though everything still hurt like a bitch. Waiting for everybody to get in their seats, Peter went stupidly far just to avoid looking as Groot and Rocket tried to work out how to get the kid strapped in. It took too long for Peter's liking, but the split second it was taken care of, he started the engine and took off.

"Which way is it?" Gamora stared at the map with a look on her face Peter couldn't even begin to figure out.

"Very edge of the quadrant." His voice felt really thick and gravelly when he tried to talk. He didn't know why; he wasn't upset or anything. Hell, if he  _was_  upset, it was only because he was terrified Mac was gonna back out at the very last minute and he'd be really,  _truly_ stuck. "It's right next to a big, yellow star. You can't miss it."

Nobody talked much after that. Peter wanted to go on a rant about how this was the kid's fault—see what had already happened to them? And the so-called bundle of joy had only been on board for less than a day! But he knew that was bullshit, honestly. Besides, he was more than a little scared somebody might go into detail about just how shitty and cowardly he was being.

So, instead of forcing small talk, he slipped his headphones on, turning up the music so he could get back to memorizing all the new lyrics. It felt like it took forever, but after a few hours passed, everybody started to pack it up and head down to their quarters. First Groot, then Drax and Rocket... Gamora, who'd really tried to tough it out, ended up slumped over to one side, passed out in her chair. Peter watched her sleep for a few minutes, then set the autopilot and got up, eyes burning and limbs feeling weirdly light after they'd hurting for days on end. Somehow, he ended up in his bunk, curling up on top of it and slowly starting to crash despite his nerves.

He woke up with his heart pounding. All the lights were off, and nobody else was moving, or even  _up_. At first, he tried to work out why he was even awake. Except, the second he had an answer to that question, he hated himself for wondering.

It was crying.

Peter waited, listening while his stomach lurched in a way that told him he really might hurl, hoping somebody else would wake up and take care of it. But they didn't. Hey, this was probably a nightmare where only Peter could hear the kid crying, anyway. Made enough sense, with all the luck he'd been having lately. Lying there, he stared up into the dark, every silence between the creepy, mewling sounds feeling way too loud, until finally he jerked up, sliding his legs off the bunk and padding quickly over to the carrier.

"Okay." As he crouched down, he realized for the first time that his hands were kind of shaking. "... C-Can you just... Can you stop doing that? I can't... " He swallowed. "I can't do this. I c-can't do any of this."

The crying didn't get any louder, but it sure as hell didn't stop. Peter glanced over his shoulder, silently  _screaming_  for somebody to get up and do something to help him here, but obviously, that didn't happen. The kid just kept squirming and kicking and whining, and Peter sat there, quietly freaking out.

"C'mon." He thinned his lips together, reaching out, fingers actually vibrating from terror—Seriously! He was actually scared shitless by a baby.  _Him,_ Peter Quill, the mighty  _Star-Lord—_ and just sort of... resting his palm on the squirt's tiny,  _tiny_  head. "Look." He felt his shoulders twitch like they were gonna give out, but he forced himself to keep his hand where it was. "I'm not cut out for this. I'd totally screw you up, or kill you, or... " Peter made a really bitter face. "... I mean, that's not really... That's not it, though. It's not... " That wasn't his reason for this. At least, not all of it. It wasn't like Peter didn't want to want him. He did. He  _wished_  he did, but... "I just don't..."

_Want you now._

It sounded pretty fucking terrible when he said it, even in his own head, but the way his stomach felt all heavy afterwards told him he knew it was the truth. He realized, after a good few seconds of staring dumbly at nothing, somehow, without him noticing, the crying had stopped, and the kid had fallen asleep again.

Peter got to his feet, overly careful and more than paranoid of waking the kid up again. But he kept on sleeping, and Peter crept back, finally turning and sinking gradually onto his bunk. He pulled the flimsy covers over himself, like he was making some sort of protective coccoon that'd keep him safe from the fucking seven-and-a-half-pound terror. Feeling pretty shameless, he made sure to wrap the blankets tight around his head, just in case the kid started shrieking again and Peter would have to make it believable he didn't hear it.

Nothing must've happened, though, because Peter slept fine through the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

 

It was hard not to get all mopey, and have these whiny, cliche, depressing thoughts, but Peter couldn't help it.

He didn't want to come back like this. For such a weird reason and a visit that he wanted to make as brief as possible...

Then again, maybe he didn't want to come back at all. Part of him was pretty positive that was true, but the other part was constantly hoping something would happen to  _force_  him to go back. Something that wouldn't give him a choice. Well, it looked like past Peter got his freaking wish. Even now, the whole time when they were navigating, and then breaking through the atmosphere trying to land, Peter kept hoping something would go wrong and delay them a little more. Maybe it would be too dark to land anywhere without somebody seeing. Or maybe they wouldn't be able to find a spot to touch down, period. He just... didn't want things to move too fast. But that part wasn't about the kid so much. Peter still wanted to take care of that as soon as he could, no question. But he didn't want to see anything crazy in the five or ten minutes he was gonna spend on Earth. He didn't want to have his whole world rocked.

It would kind of suck to have all his memories from growing up here get thrown down the garbage after seeing some huge, ridiculous changes.

Plus, Peter kind of thought he deserved a break from all the nonstop bullshit getting flung at him, and frankly, moping about how much Earth probably... wasn't the  _same_  didn't seem like it'd help anything. Definitely wasn't gonna help him get this over with, anyway. It was bad enough he'd spent twenty minutes trying to find something to write a shitty little note on, and then another twenty minutes working out what the hell he  _should_  write.

In the end, he just went for the simplest thing he could think of, then stood up, stuffing the note in his pocket. He grabbed his walkman in one hand, and the handle to the kid's carrier in the other, then slowly stepped out of his quarters, glancing around at everybody. Nobody really said anything, but when Peter made a move to head towards the landing pad, Gamora moved like she was gonna try to come with him. Freezing for a second, Peter shook his head. "I'm gonna... " He pressed his lips together and stared at the ground. "I think this is just... something I'm gonna have to do on my own."

Gamora gave him the saddest look he might've ever gotten from her. It almost hurt to see it, so he looked away, watching his own feet as he climbed onto the landing pad and let it fold down towards the ground. When he stepped onto the grass, Peter stopped to watch the Milano's hull close back up, staring at all the dings and dents she was still covered in. Then, finally, he slipped his headphones around his neck and fumbled to skip through the tracks with fingers that, again, started shaking without him even knowing.

_One, two, three, four._

He started walking.

_Close your eyes, have no fear. The monster's gone, he's on the run, and your daddy's here._

He kept going, trying not to look in the carrier until the kid made this tiny little noise. Peter glanced down before he could stop himself. It was dark, and he couldn't see much, but something told him there was a good chance the kid was gonna start crying. Stopping in his tracks, Peter clipped the player into his belt and hefted the carrier up against his chest.

"Come on," he whispered. "Don't... " His jaw gave this pathetic little tremble and he had to take a second, forcing himself  _not_  to think about why this was messing with his head so much.

_Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer. Every day, in every way it's getting better and better._

"You're gonna... " Peter forced himself to start moving again, wincing as the kid let out a louder, whinier sound. "You're gonna be better off here. Trust me." He was doing the right thing here, okay? He never wanted a kid.  _Never_ . Raising one just wasn't something Peter Quill was supposed to do. Because, yeah, he was selfish, but he also knew he'd never work as a...  _parent_ . He'd be messing up two lives at once, and Peter wasn't gonna try and convince himself things would turn out okay just because he wanted them to. This little, whimpering thing deserved to grow up around somebody who wouldn't regret deciding to keep him. And Peter had tried to find that person, or at least, somebody who could find that person  _for him_.

The kid wailed quietly, kind of like he was trying to get Peter to understand just how wrong he was.

At least, that's what it felt like. But Peter knew better. And this was the best he could do.

So, swallowing the dry feeling in his throat, he started to sing.

"Before you cross the street... " He kept his eyes on the kid as he walked up the hill, towards the only house that still had any lights on. "Take my hand." The whimpering got softer and Peter felt his eyes start to burn a little. "... Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

He let John Lennon's muffled voice sing the chorus solo. Peter wasn't sure what felt worse right now: knowing his mom picked this song out especially for him, or that he was listening to it now, looking down at his own kid, and not feeling anything at all.

He crouched on the porch, set the carrier on the doormat, and pulled the note out of his pocket, placing it carefully on the baby's chest. For a good few seconds, he stayed like that, gingerly cupped that tiny cheek when he heard one last fussy noise. Then he pulled his hand away, standing and knocking roughly on the screen door. Another couple of seconds passed before Peter heard the sound of someone moving inside. Turning, he walked briskly off the porch, forcing himself not to break into a sprint even though he really,  _really_  wanted to. But no matter how much the thought of getting dragged back into life on Earth terrified him, he just couldn't find it in him to run.

Once he got to the tree line, Peter watched from the dark part of the yard, making sure Mac opened the door and took the kid in. He did; Peter saw him bend down, grab the note, stare at it, then lift the carrier, baby and all, and take it back into the house with him. Peter stayed till most of the lights were turned off, then finally managed to get his legs to move again. He felt relieved.  _Insanely_ relieved. And sure, that made him a terrible, _horrible_ person, but none of that was news anymore. Maybe it just stung because he had finally started thinking of himself as a good guy.

It took him half of the trek back to realize the headphones were still on, and when he did, for whatever sick, self-loathing reason, he skipped back a few tracks, shoving the headphones back onto his ears.

Nobody tried to talk to him when he got back on board. Thank God.

Stomping into the cockpit, he dropped into seat and turned up the volume, kicking his feet up on the dashboard as he watched the Earth shrink into a tiny, blue dot.


	9. Chapter 9

Rick was feeling a little paranoid.

And even though he knew that was the whole point of horror movies—to make you as uneasy as possible—he was starting to think messing up the couch to make a crappy fort had been a bad idea. Uncle Mac sure wasn't gonna appreciate it if he got home early. Then again, leaving the fort or packing everything up seemed like an even worse plan, so he guessed he was basically stuck until the scene changed. Actually, this scene wasn't that bad. They were just going over the history of the monster. It was all flash backs, before the lady became that freaky ghost thing, so it was creepy, but not really  _scary_ . Rick could deal with that.

When he actually decided to make a break for it, he sort of...  _flung himself_ at the lamp, turning it on before sprinting into the kitchen. He wasn't supposed to eat anything past nine, and he really wasn't supposed to be up at all right now, but he was pretty good at leaving no trace of his misdemeanors by the time Mac got home. Still. Maybe putting the couch cushions back might not be such a bad idea. Grabbing the box of Little Debbies off the microwave, he looked down and made a face. Mac got the vanilla ones again, but Rick guessed they'd have to do. Tucking it under his arm, he padded across the gap between the rooms, avoiding looking down the hall at all costs. There was literally a horror movie on at that exact moment, and looking down that hall would be  _the_ horror movie mistake that'd get him killed! Sure, kids don't normally die in horror movies, but they do sometimes! Rick had seen enough to know he couldn't count on his age keeping him safe.

As soon as his feet were back on the living room rug, he scrambled into his fort, quietly unwrapping his snack as he watched the guy in the coma start to have a messed up dream. This would definitely turn out to be a jump scare, he could already—Yep! Called it.

He bit down on his cake with relish, then froze when he heard something that sounded horribly like the front door creaking open.

Slowly,  _painstakingly_ setting the snack cake down, Rick fought to keep the thin plastic from crinkling. Heart pounding in his chest, he slowly inched out of his fort, peeking out the nearest window. There were lights in the trees. Lights that definitely did not belong to Uncle Mac's old pickup truck. Okay, now his heart wasn't pounding; it had dropped out of his chest completely. He just had to... He had to get to a phone! That's right! Thankfully, cell phones existed, and—

Oh no.

He silently rummaged around his blankets and cushions, finally giving in when the realization hit him.

It was in the kitchen, wasn't it?

Rick took a deep, shaky breath, clambering across the rug on his hands and knees, inching towards the kitchen and then pausing just in front of the hall. The one that lead right to the front door. Which someone had just opened. Hands clenching into fists, Rick dragged pulled himself to his feet, eyes huge. Seconds ticked by, and finally he scrambled into the kitchen, grabbing his phone off the counter and clutching it against his chest for a second before holding it out and unlocking it. This night was turning into one big horror cliche, and now Rick realized it was kind of his own fault. How else was he supposed to die? What other way would be more horribly ironic? The universe was messing with him! That was the only reason he could figure why he suddenly had no bars. Or maybe it was just because this side of the house always had crappy reception.

The service would probably be better in the den.

Clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering, Rick padded back the way he came, pausing at the hall and glancing back and forth one more time. He frowned, standing up straighter and squinting in confusion when he realized the front door was closed. What kind of child-killing sociopath closes the door after breaking in? Either they were messing with him, or... Well. It was more likely that person only existed in Rick's mind, with some added sound effect help from that stupid movie, and some lights from somebody driving by that had already faded into the distance.

"Ugh." Rick carefully raised his phone again, taking a few hesitant steps before he paused in the middle of the hall. Biting his lip, he turned towards the front door—just to be totally sure it  _was_ closed—and lifted his phone, checking his phone tracker app. It had been a pain, trying to install that parental software on Mac's phone, but not a day had gone by that Rick didn't consider it worth the effort. Sometimes he worried the old guy was gonna figure it out, but Uncle Mac barely even used his phone to begin with, especially not enough to figure out what Rick had done. And now, it felt more worth it than ever when Rick saw that Mac was only about ten minutes away.

He started to relax a little, checking his messages to see that, yep, Mac had texted him he'd be heading back almost fifteen minutes ago. The guy didn't like catching Rick up this late, sure, but they both kind of knew he'd be awake whether or not he was  _supposed_ to be. About halfway through going over his old messages, Rick noticed a weird red glare on the screen. Furrowing his brow, he tilted his phone, then made a confused face. Maybe somebody's rear lights were shining in through the bathroom window and reflecting down the hall or something. For no real reason other than to confirm this—and maybe that he was being totally  _stupid—_ Rick glanced back, then felt every muscle in his body go stiff with shock.

It felt like one of those build-up scenes where they don't show the whole monster in the first shot. The camera starts down at the feet, then pans up the legs, then the middle, then stops so the audience can take in the creature's freakish, grisly head. Well, Rick took one slow, long look at this huge, bulky stranger with a robotic face and glowing red eyes. He took it in for a second or two. And then he screamed.

His body reacted pretty quick, and for a second, Rick was actually proud. There was a real chance he might make it! Then a pair of giant arms grabbed him around his middle, and he had the distinct feeling of getting flipped over someone's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Yelping, he writhed as the hand around his waist tightened.

"Whoa! Whoa,  _whoa—_ chill out!"

Rick went limp, eyes bugging out of their sockets in disbelief. That... almost sounded human.

"I'm just here to pick you up," the voice continued.

"Pick me... " Rick squinted. " _What?"_

He jerked in surprise as the...  _person_ slowly started to set him down. Once he was back on his feet, Rick looked up to see some random guy's totally normal face, then wondered faintly if he really did hallucinate that robot head. "Wh-Who are you? Why... Why are you in my house?" And acting like he didn't just break in out of nowhere, and apparently close the door nicely behind him, but Rick was having a lot of trouble... thinking.

"What?" The guy grinned, and something about that look made Rick feel almost pissed off for a second. "Didn't Mac tell you about your old man?"

"My... " Rick swallowed, then timidly shook his head. This guy was huge, and...  _lumpy_ , and didn't look a thing like Rick! Not that he'd believe an overly friendly, possible sociopath was related to him in the first place. "No way."

"Uh,  _yeah_ way." He snorted, and Rick squinted again, feeling more confused than ever. Sure, this guy was clearly nuts, but for some reason, he wasn't fearing for his life like he probably should have been. Maybe something about the stranger's casual tone, or really childish way of talking, put him at ease. "And hey, guess what?" The guy had to crouch down to get level with Rick, and Rick stepped back, not liking the weirdo's expression. "I'm here to get some quality time with my spawn."

"Um. No." Rick started inching backwards, hand fumbling into his pocket to grab his phone. "I've never seen you before in my life, and I'm calling the cops."

"Yoink!" The guy lunged forward and Rick yelped as his phone got torn right out of his hands.

"You can't just—" Rick bristled, realizing he was arguing with what had to be an escaped mental patient, then scrambling forward to punch repeatedly at the guy's stomach anyway. "Give that back!"

"Whoa!" The guy didn't budge, and shoved Rick back so easily it was kind of unnerving. "Take it easy, terminator." He shrugged, shoving Rick's phone into his... man-satchel with one hand, and holding Rick back with the other. "Also, uh... Not sure how to break it to you, but you don't really get a say in any of this."

Swallowing, Rick went still again and started gawking up at the stranger. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I got all the legal papers." He tried to stumble back, but felt himself get yanked over flipped over the guy's shoulder, anyway. "Let's just say... I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I feel like you deserve to have me in your life. And as far as most of the Galaxy's concerned, I got total custody over you."

Rick grabbed nervously onto the nearest surface, which just happened to be the back of his kidnapper's coat. "You're not my dad! Wh... Where are you taking me? Are you g-gonna hold me for ransome?" He thrashed a little, but before too long, he was feeling too weak and panicky to keep it up. "Uncle Mac's not that rich, okay? He wouldn't even get me a new phone for my birthday! Mine's, like, two gens behind!"

"Word to the wise, Scrappy Doo—" The stranger just rummaged around in the kitchen, yanking a bunch of drawers open before finding the loose-leaf paper Mac kept around for listing repairs. "—I'm not gonna be all that familiar with this  _radical_ new lingo you young'uns are speaking. I haven't been on Terra since... " He swallowed loudly and got quiet, and Rick furrowed his brow, trying to see over the guy's shoulder, almost like he could get a good look at the guy's face just because he wanted to. "Well. Okay. Listen." The guy sighed really loud, turning a pen around in his fingers. "I'm gonna level with you. Like, one hundred percent sincerity mode." The creep paused, and Rick felt his hands start to bunch into fists again. "This... isn't the safest place in the quadrant right now. And I kinda... wouldn't forgive myself? If something... happened?" Rick heard something muttered that sounded like "keep you safe", and started to get a little dizzy.

He shook his head, listening to the sound of the guy scrawling something quickly on the paper. For a second, he thought about fighting again, but stopped when he got swung around when the stranger turned. As soon as he felt less nauseous, Rick glanced down, quickly reading the short note that'd been left on the kitchen counter:

_Mac_

_Came to pick up the kid. Email me or whatever._

_\- Peter_

Rick went slowly, absolutely still, sinking down over an unfamiliar shoulder as he stared bleakly at the note. After a moment or two, he turned his head, heart in his throat as he boggled dumbly at the back of Peter's head.

"It really is you."

He got a laugh in response. "Yeah, no shit."

After that, Rick just stayed limp, watching the chafed wood floors turn into the peeling panels of the porch, and then the patchy grass on the front yard. He tensed, grabbing fearfully at Peter's jacket when this loud, construction site noise, along with what felt like floodlights, hit him out of nowhere. Craning his neck, he panted, starting to panic a little when he craned his neck back and took in the weirdest looking hunk of metal he'd seen outside of Transformers. Was this a space ship? So... he was dreaming? He was pretty sure he wasn't dreaming, though. Hallucinating, maybe, but Rick refused enforce the whole cliche where he was convinced he was dreaming and totally fine with everything because of that.

This was either real, and terrifying and weird, or it was a hallucination, which was also a pretty terrifying and weird. Mostly because Rick was pretty sure healthy kids of his age weren't supposed to randomly hallucinate. He moaned under his breath, shaking just a tiny bit as Peter trotted up the steps and onto the lift-thingy. Well, whatever the hell was going on, he'd know before too long.

Hallucinations didn't last forever, right?

It seemed like it took forever for the landing pad to tuck itself back into the ship, and when Peter finally set him down again, Rick almost fell over. And then he looked around, took in the sight of what was surrounding him, and actually did.

"Whoa, shit!" Peter bent and pulled him back up, then stood, but kept a hand on Rick's shoulder. "Yeah, I get it. First contact can be kinda crazy."

"F-First..." Rick repeated dumbly, just staring and staring. And then: "I-Is that a  _raccoon?"_

"I ain't the type to appreciate gettin' generalized, pipsqueak." The raccoon bared its teeth threateningly.

Rick gawked, then giggled stupidly. "It talks..."

"Seriously?" The raccoon's tail puffed up and Rick noticed, probably a little too late, there was some kind of oversized, super-gun on its hip. "You're lucky you're the fruit of Quill's loins, or I'd be relievin' you of that blown up melon you call a head."

"I am Groot."

Rick watched as the raccoon scrambled up a  _talking tree_ , then winced and cowed away fearfully when the very same giant, hulking tree-man lumbered over to him, reaching out one huge, bark-covered arm so it could...

Pet his head. Oh.

"Aww, he likes you!" Peter gave Rick a nudge and he wobbled, wondering if he should try and make another break for it. "'Course, that's not really a compliment if you know the guy. He's got really crappy taste in friends."

Rick looked up at Peter, starting to feel pretty fuzzy in the mental department.

"Greetings, Maverick, son of Quill." Rick couldn't help but cringe fearfully when the second-most-massive person crouched in front of him, offering Rick his ham-sized hand. "I am Drax the Destroyer. I have traveled far and fought alongside your mother for many—"

Peter cleared his throat really loud and Rick felt like his hair stood on end. "What? What about my mom?" Two parents in one day? Rick thought he might pass out for real! Out of nowhere, despite all the risidual terror, he was starting to feel sort of happy. At the very least, a little excited. He figured there was about a thirty percent chance he wasn't going to run for his life for sure after a certain level of crazy.

He'd never known anything about either of his folks—Mac could never tell him, and Rick wanted to think he was just hiding something, but part of him was pretty sure the old guy just didn't know. Which... kinda sucked to know. But this? This was... "Where is she?" This is amazing! "Is she here right now?" It can't be that green lady, right?

The bald guy glanced up at Peter in confusion, pulling his hand back. "Yes?"

The green lady stepped forward, glowering at Peter. "You didn't tell him, did you?"

Peter groaned. "Uh,  _no_ . I mean, I still have some dignity left."

Rick curled his hands weakly against his chest, watching the woman fearfully. Some part of him had to note that it was strange he felt so much more afraid of this lady than the hulking tree guy, or the murderous raccoon, or the giant, buff "Destroyer" man, but something about her just felt extra serious. But then she crouched in front of him next to "Drax", starting to smile, and Rick started to feel a little less petrified.

"Hello, Maverick." She pulled his wrist away from his chest and squeezed his hand gingerly, and he frowned, wondering dizzily why everyone thought that was his name. "My name is Gamora. You now know Drax; Rocket is the one you called 'raccoon', and Groot is the one with the branches." She smiled and got to her feet slowly. "And... I believe you already know Peter."

Rick turned around, staring up at Peter in slight amazement, almost like he hadn't just seen the guy breaking into his house and messing with his stuff.

Unlike before, Peter seemed almost awkard, raising his hand in a quick jerk and grinning. "Hey."

Rick dropped his gaze, staring blankly straight ahead as he tried not to freak out too much, or have some sort of brain malfunction. He was here with a bunch of aliens, with a guy he'd never me, who looked nothing like him, claiming to be his "old man" while forcefully kidnapping him because earth "wasn't safe."

Basically everything about this was a warning sign. The options of bolting, or trying to grab his phone from Peter so he could call the cops, were both pretty fresh in his mind. Although, honestly, he'd think maybe this was some huge candid camera scheme if he hadn't seen the talking raccoon. But somehow, crazy as it seemed, a part of him was insisting that this was real. And not only was it real, this guy...  _Peter_ .... really was who Rick thought he was. And even though his throat was burning with a million questions, Rick needed to check one thing before he decided for sure what he wanted to do.

"Give me my phone."

Peter looked mockingly offended. "What, no please?"

" _Please."_ The guy looked a little surprised, maybe taken aback by how sincere Rick sounded. Peter's expression turned serious as he pulled the phone out of his bag and handed it over. A small part of Rick made sure to note, a little too optimistically, that a kidnapper totally wouldn't do that—not even an alien one. But that wasn't really the point.

He slowly worked the case open, sliding off the back panel and pulling out the crumpled, ancient paper to look quickly at the note inside. Thinking back to the message on the counter, he tried to compare the penmanship. As soon as he stared at those way-too familiar words, he knew he didn't need a perfect memory to be sure.

The same person wrote both.

"Okay," he mumbled.

"Okay?" Peter raised his eyebrows. "'Okay' what?"

Rick took a deep breath. "Okay..." He lifted his head to look Peter straight in the eye. "I'll come with you."

"Well." Peter shrugged. "I was already gonna make you." He grinned again, and Rick winced when the guy reached out and tossed his head. "Glad you're on board, though."

"So... What are you gonna do with me?" Rick glanced around, swallowing nervously.

"Gamora." Peter made a vague, circular gesture before trotting over to the lopsided ladder at the end of the room. "Show him the ropes."

Drax made an irritated noise. "We have no ropes on this vessel. They would serve no purpose."

"Yeah." Peter poked his head back down through the hatch. "Might wanna get used to that."


End file.
